Handball Stafa

That gap has never closed at senior level: Handball Stäfa has reached Nationalliga A without ever lifting the national championship or the Swiss Cup.

Promotion came in 1999, again in 2008, and once more in 2025, each return following stretches in the second tier, where the Nationalliga B title was won twice, in 2001/02 and 2009/10. Between the promotions came two runs to the Swiss Cup Final Four, in 2012 and 2013, close enough to the trophy to sting.

Underneath the first team, the youth setup has done what the seniors have not, taking Swiss junior championships with the C-juniors in 1994/95, the U17 Elite side in 2008/09 and the U13 Espoirs in 2010/11. For nearly a decade, from 2010 to 2019, the club shed its own name altogether, playing under the sponsored banner Lakers Stäfa before switching back to Handball Stäfa. The yellow and black kit never changed through any of it, a leftover from the club's original title, Handball Club Gelb Schwarz Stäfa, when it split off as its own section of Sportclub Stäfa in 1962.

Matches are still played in the town on the shore of Lake Zürich that gives the derby its name, in a hall that holds 2,000, a modest setting for a club that keeps finding its way back to the top flight.