“Even as a professional handballer, I keep going ‘uh-duh’… I’m still hungry for a championship”
The phrase “Udu” (Doosan wins anyway) originated in handball, not professional baseball. In the 10 years since “World Star” Yoon Kyung-shin (50) took over as head coach in 2013, Doosan has only missed out on the SK Handball Korea League title once, in the 2014 season (when they won the Welcome Run). Doosan also lost the first game to Incheon City Corporation in the best-of-three championship series in the 2022-2023 season, but won the next two games to secure its eighth consecutive title.
“Honestly, after losing the first game of the championship, I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore,'” Yoon said during a recent meeting at the club’s office in Songpa-gu, Seoul. “I think the players’ faces were sad. They said, ‘Coach, we’ve got it, we’re going to win,’ and then they won the second and third games,” he said, giving credit to the players.
When Yoon first took the helm, Doosan was a team with young national team players such as Park Chan-young (40) and Chung Eui-kyung (38), but as the years went by, they became older, and Kim Dong-myung (38-Chungnam-do) and others left the team. In the meantime, other teams were chanting “Overthrow Doosan” and preempting promising players.먹튀검증
If Doosan wanted to defend its throne, it had to develop its own players. This season’s rookie king, Kim Min-kyu (23-Pivot), is a prime example. Coach Yoon said, “Min-kyu joined the team as a trainee, but he has grown to be recognized as one of the best rookies. “After Kim Dong-myung left the team in 2021, Pivot was unstable, which put pressure on other players. The team has gained momentum to rise again.” The handball pivot is a position similar to the center in basketball. The pivot must fight hard with the defender in front of the opponent’s goal so that his teammates can find openings and score.
Kim Min-kyu is the first Doosan player to be named Rookie of the Year in eight years since Hwang Do-yeop (29) in 2015, and he is also the last Rookie of the Year in the Handball League. That’s because professional handball will begin in the 2023-2024 season. Yoon is also entering his first professional season after holding the record for the most championships (nine) for both men and women. “I like odd numbers, so I wore the number 5, 7, and 13 as a player. I’m happy to finish the handball league with an odd number of nine championships,” said Yoon.
Yoon’s love affair with odd numbers began in the German Bundesliga, one of the top handball leagues in the world. He was the top scorer in Germany seven times and scored a total of 2,905 goals. For nearly 15 years, 2,905 goals remained the Bundesliga’s all-time individual scoring record. When Hannes Lindberg (42-Berlin) became the new record holder on the 20th, it was reported in Germany that “it never occurred to me that someone could break Yoon’s record”.
Yoon said, “Lindbergh, who I played with in Hamburg, broke the record. I congratulate and honor him for setting the record by taking good care of himself over 40 years old.” Yoon, who went to Germany in 1996, returned to Korea in 2008 in a Doosan uniform and finished his career in 2011 at the age of 38.
“I broke my ‘personal record’ as a professional player, but I want to write a ‘team record’ that is hard to break as a professional coach,” Yoon said. These are his first professional championship title and most wins. “I don’t know how long I will be able to coach because it is a position that is evaluated by performance,” said Yoon. “I will win the title in my first year as a professional, and if I win one, I will aim for three, and if I win three, I will aim for five.”