USAM Nîmes Gard Women

Promotion is what defines the current mood at Salle Le Parnasse: the women's side went through Nationale 1 unbeaten in its pool during the 2024-2025 campaign and have earned a place in Division 2 Féminine for 2025-2026, a first step into the national tiers proper.

The club itself dates back to 1960, when former students of the Mont Duplan school in Nîmes formed USAM, and for decades handball in the city meant the men's side, four times French champions between 1988 and 1993. Women's handball at this level only returned to the city in 2016, and it returned out of failure rather than growth: Handball Cercle Nîmes, the club that had won the Coupe Challenge twice, collapsed financially, and USAM stepped in to take on its youth structures and some of its players. Les Nîmoises, as the team is known, effectively started again from Nationale 2.

May 2025 gave the rebuilt side its first real silverware. In the Coupe de France Fédérale Féminine final at the Accor Arena in Paris, Nîmes beat La Motte-Servolex 34–28, a scoreline settled over a full afternoon rather than a rush at the end. Captain Léa Biscuit has carried the side through this rise, and Grégoire Detrez, once a men's player at the club, now coaches from the bench having grown up on the other side of the sport here.

Local needle is provided by Bouillargues Handball Nîmes Méditerranée, the other side of the Derby gardois, a fixture that keeps handball rivalry inside the Gard department rather than sending it further afield.

Matches are played at Salle Le Parnasse, a ground that holds just over 4,000 and now has a top flight of French women's handball to work its way toward.