Rolf Brack is dead: the legacy of the handball professor – sport
Rolf Brack entered the big handball stage for the last time in Lower Franconia, more precisely in Rimpar. It was a difficult mission for which he was reactivated to work on the sidelines at the age of 67. The second division handball club DJK Rimpar wanted to ensure that they remained in the second division, so the services of the recognized handball expert and experienced and successful coach seemed necessary. Brack took over the relegation-threatened team and secured the club, which now operates as Wölfe Würzburg, to remain in the league. That was in 2021. After that, that was the plan, he wanted to go back into his well-deserved retirement. Now Rolf Brack has died unexpectedly at the age of 69 after a urological operation.
As a player, Brack, who was born in Kirn an der Nahe (Rhineland-Palatinate), played for the Bundesliga club SG Dietzenbach, among others, but he discovered his true passion early on when, at the age of 29, he took over as coach at the Oberliga club TSV Zuffenhausen. He quickly made a name for himself, leading the SG Stuttgart-Scharnhausen and the TSV Scharnhausen to the handball elite with great expertise and even more commitment and passion – clubs with comparatively small budgets. He did the same with VfL Pfullingen and HBW Balingen-Weilstetten, where he shaped an era.
At the end of 2013, Brack became national coach, but not for the German handball Bund (DHB), for which he was once in discussion, but for Switzerland. Although Brack led the DHB coach training, among others, the current national coach Alfred Gislason acquired his A license during this time, but from 2013 to 2016 he stood on the sidelines for Switzerland. Before he returned to everyday business in the Bundesliga at Frisch Auf Göppingen and most recently for a short guest appearance at HC Erlangen (2020). But Brack not only lectured to professionals and coaches, the students at the University of Stuttgart also benefited from the knowledge of the doctorate and habilitation sports scientist.
In all his work, Rolf Brack was not only distinguished by his enormous expertise and his inexhaustible wealth of experience, he was a valued, because pleasant, sensitive and friendly contemporary who knew how to take both students and players with him. It could happen that he asked his team to a small unit at a gas station on the way to an away game, just don’t get bored in everyday training. The handball professor, as he was affectionately called, was always innovative, looking for new ways, new motivations. Brack was one of the first to experiment with the seventh field player, who ordered three players to the circle – and thus also expanded the horizons of many colleagues.
The handball world loses a highly valued and popular professional. Rolf Brack leaves behind his wife Eva, their two sons Daniel, 42, and Benjamin, 39, and four grandsons.
