This is the third post in Where Team USA Handball Took Me, a series about what a place looks like when you’re there to compete. The first two covered Morocco and a training camp in Paris; this one is San Juan, Puerto Rico, with the Senior National Team, 14–20 June 2026. These are field notes: where I actually was, in the order it happened.
Getting there: 14 June
A short flight for once: Fort Lauderdale to San Juan on the afternoon of the 14th, landing just before 4 p.m. Team training was at 7 p.m. that same evening, then dinner. No long-haul jet lag, no currency to sort out — some of the usual friction of a national team trip just wasn’t there.
San Juan: 14–20 June
The team stayed together in an Airbnb, and team meetings and lunches happened there.
15–17 June: three matches in three nights
The core of the trip was three matches on three consecutive nights, each at 7 p.m. The days in between were built around them: a team meeting and lunch before each one, training on the morning of the 16th. Playing every night means the body needs more maintenance, not less, and that maintenance doesn’t pause for sightseeing.
San Juan makes it easy to feel like you got more out of a short window than you did, because so much of the postcard version — the colour, the ocean, the old walls — shows up even from a car window on the way to the venue.
18–20 June: two days with a car
After the last match, the schedule opened up. We picked up a rental car near the airport in Isla Verde at noon on the 18th and kept it until the morning we flew out — two days that were ours instead of the team’s.
Getting home: 20 June
We returned the car on the morning of the 20th and flew San Juan to Fort Lauderdale at 9:52 a.m., home by lunchtime.
More from this series
This is the third entry in Where Team USA Handball Took Me, after Morocco, November 2025 and Paris, December 2025.
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