Sagunto honours Iván Miró and Mateo López, Spanish beach handball runners-up
Sagunto City Council received Iván Miró and Mateo López, from Fertiberia BM Puerto Sagunto (a local youth handball club), on Tuesday after they won silver at the Spanish Championship of Regional Selections in beach handball.
The plenary hall of Sagunto's City Council hosted a municipal tribute on Tuesday to Iván Miró and Mateo López, two young players from Fertiberia BM Puerto Sagunto (a local youth handball club) who won the silver medal at the Spanish Championship of Regional Selections (CESA), a national beach handball competition for children.
Both players earned their place after competing in a smaller summer tournament in Jávea, held to keep players fit during the off-season. Their performance caught the attention of the Valencian regional team's coaches, who called them up for the CESA squad.
In the championship, the Valencian selection defeated several regional teams, including the Canary Islands, La Rioja, Madrid and Aragón, before losing the final to the Andalusian team and finishing in second place.
The reception was attended by Sagunto's mayor, Darío Moreno, and the councillor for Physical Activity, Health and Sports, Javier Timón, along with the players and their families. Moreno praised both players' versatility, since they compete both on the court and on the beach, and highlighted the grassroots work done by local clubs, which teach values beyond competitive results. Timón said Miró and López are an example for staying active even during the summer break, adding that this kind of youth training reflects well on Sagunto's local sport beyond the town.
The players themselves said it was "an honour" to represent Fertiberia BM Puerto Sagunto at a national event and admitted they had never expected to reach a CESA tournament. Both thanked their teammates and families for their support throughout the season.
The youth club they come from, Balonmano Puerto Sagunto (which competes in lower categories under the Fertiberia sponsorship), was founded in 1951 and has more than seven decades of history developing young handball players in the town. This is not the first municipal recognition for the club: its first team, Fertiberia BM Puerto Sagunto, was honoured in May for its promotion to Spain's second-tier ASOBAL league, and in July another youth team from BM Morvedre earned a similar national runner-up finish.
According to Ajuntament de Sagunt — Actualidad, with additional background from Wikipedia on the club's founding.