When USA Team Handball decided to start an international beach program in 2015, the sport was so far off the radar that the handful of guys playing the game in Southern California were usually mistaken for beach volleyball players.

The obscure nature of the sport in North America was only one of the challenges facing coach Mike Hinson as he tried to put together a U.S. men’s national team to hit the beach. There also wasn’t a ready-made talent pool from which Hinson could choose.

So the first Team USA roster included a dodgeball world champion, some college lacrosse players, the goalie from the 2012 U.S. Olympic water polo team, a couple former U.S. national team handball players, a Division I basketball center, and a former University of North Carolina quarterback who was pushing 40.

Bill Bigham, the ex-Tar Heel who gave up the gridiron to help the U.S. to reach the World team handball championships in 2001, thought the closest he would get to competitive athletics in his late 30s was coaching a Little League or Pop Warner team.

Yet Bigham, older than his head coach, agreed to captain an adventure aimed at taking the U.S. to a place of prominence in a sport dominated by Brazil and Eastern European nations and landing beach team handball on the 2028 Olympic Games schedule.

“No one knows what our sport is,” said Bigham, who turns 42 next month. “There’s no money in this. No endorsements, no recognition, no anything. We’re just a handful of guys getting together and playing for each other.”

Bigham is also driven by the memory his late nephew, who died less than a month after birth because of a heart ailment.

“I’ve loved playing sports all my life,” Bigham said. “That little guy never got that chance. So now I play in his honor. When I was younger, when I played I wanted the attention. Now I want to give my best in love and life and give it to my team.”

Bigham captained the Hermosa Beach-based Team USA to a gold medal in its first major tournament, the 2016 Pan American Championships, to earn a spot in the World Championships. In the process, Bigham became the first American to play in a World Championships in both team handball and beach team handball.

“How bananas was it for us to win that first tournament?” Bigham said. “You had 10 random guys you had to bring together, teach them a new sport and after just 2 ½ months go down to Venezuela of all places and we go down there and we win it!”

Last year, the U.S. earned a Pan Am Games bronze medal and qualified for a second beach Worlds.

Team USA also turned in a solid performance at the ANOC World Beach Games in Doha, Oatar, which wrapped up in October. The U.S. posted a pair of wins, pushed Australia and Uruguay to shoot-outs, and came within a goal of sending Sweden, fourth in last year’s Worlds, to an extra period.

Bigham was part of Mack Brown’s last recruiting class in Chapel Hill. Ahead of him on the depth chart at quarterback was Ronald Curry, who would go on to set school records in passing and total yards and be named MVP in two bowl games.

One of Bigham’s professors was also coach of the school’s team handball club. The professor offered Bigham a reality check: He could ride the bench behind Curry or he could be a standout in a new, albeit, low-profile sport.

“He saw the writing on the wall before I wanted to admit it,” Bigham said of the professor. “He said I could keep doing this football thing or I could give it up and train fulltime doing team handball. I gave up football.”

After a successful career with the U.S. national team, Bigham retired in the 2000s, going into sales, eventually settling in Manhattan Beach in 2011.

“I’m done with sports,” Bigham recalled thinking. “I had moved on with my career.”

Then Hinson called.

“He said, ‘I’m putting together this national team. Want to try it out?’” Bigham said.

Another phone call in 2016 would be even more life changing.

Not long after Bigham’s sister-in-law Paula learned she was pregnant, she and James Bigham, Bill’s brother, were told the baby didn’t have a fully developed heart.

“My little brother is a doctor so he understood what that meant,” Bill Bigham said. “The baby would not be to sustain life because of the heart (defect). They had a choice.

“They decided to go through with the pregnancy anyway.”

James and Paula nicknamed the unborn child Baby Z.

“I don’t know how you do that, even to this day I don’t know how you do that. It’s so difficult in so many ways,” Bigham said. “My sister-in-law carried that baby for nine months not knowing if she would even be able to hold him for an hour. I was just blown away by that love. That gave me so much inspiration.”

A few months later, Bigham’s mother called. Paula was going to deliver the baby by C-section. Bigham grabbed the next flight to the Midwest. Not long after Josiah Bigham was born, he was resting in his uncle’s arms.

“Just to hold him and just to share…” Bigham said his voice choked by emotion. “I just said ‘I love you. Nice to meet you’…”

Again Bigham’s voice was halted by the memory.

“I just love you so much.”

Josiah Bigham died two weeks later.

During the pregnancy Bill Bigham had to select his Team USA jersey number.

“I wanted to honor the little guy,” he said.

His first call after making his decision was to his brother.

“Want to know?” Bigham asked.