Today was a big day and the high point of our pre-tournament preparation since arriving in The Netherlands.
First up we congregated at De Eendracht, some arriving earlier than others to meet with Bevan in the sports hall’s physiotherapy room, where massage, taping and general management of our various niggling injuries is an ongoing process.
Once everyone was strapped up and pieced back together, former Dutch national team coach Jan Soujke van den Bos arrived. For those not familiar with international korfball, Jan Soujke coached The Netherlands for 14 years, accumulating numerous World and European Championships and World Games titles. He is now a roving guru of korfball, involved in international development. He holds a place in our sport that is similar to that of Sir Graham Henry in rugby. Needless to say, having Jan Soujke spend time with us was a huge opportunity to sharpen our understanding of korfball and further develop our skills.
Over a 90 minute training session, Jan Soujke focused on explaining our sport’s latest tactical innovation, which he has been closely involved in developing: dynamic korfball. Overturning many of the past 20 years’ conventional tactical principles, dynamic korfball focuses on making space close enough to the post to give players the maximum chance to score. Emphasis is on making good decisions, followed by sound execution. We have had some experience of dynamic korfball when roving Dutch korfballer Tjerry Steenhuisen was in New Zealand from Assen over the summer. To have it explained in more depth, including full coverage of the philosophy behind it, by such an eminent coach and one of the new system’s originators was a major privilege and enlightening for all the players. It is an exciting and ground-breaking step forward for korfball, which seems set to make our sport more enjoyable to play, to coach and to watch. We are looking forward to developing our understanding of dynamic korfball during the rest of our time in The Netherlands and putting our own spin on it once we arrive home.
After thanking Jan Soujke for giving us so much, we were taken by two DOS ’46 members, Jarolien Flinkert and Maaike Steenbergen, to Giethoorn, a picturesque Dutch village sitting aside a series of canals, surrounded by Weerribben-Wieden National Park, located about eight kilometres from Nijeveen. Jarolien is a member of the host family that Jared and Jayden are staying with and they own what is a large farm by local standards. Maaike is in her final year of a communications degree and a member of the DOS ’46 first team. Their company and guidance made it a memorable excursion.
While the weather was showing no improvement on the past few days, and in fact featured some vicious gale force winds today, bringing the icebergs of the North Sea into our bones, we were determined to enjoy what Giethoorn had to offer, though spent more time indoors than we would otherwise have done, walking along the tow paths and admiring the thatched cottages in what is known as the ‘Venice of the Netherlands’. De Fanfare was our first stop, a café sticking to its original mid-twentieth century ambience, where we enjoyed lunch and were taken into the back room, basically a barn, by host Arie for an indoor archery contest. Despite coach Mark employing his culturally authentic sledging tactics on everyone else, Jayden prevailed to win the competition, though Juliet provided the comedy highlights by first inadvertently turning out the lights, plunging the archers into complete darkness, then almost destroying the archery target.
Our next mission required some improvisation, once again, to our best laid plans. Because the weather was so bad, for the second time in five days our dependence on the national rail service proved misguided as all train services were suspended due to the gale force wind.
To reach Assen, where our friend Tjerry had organised a practice game against his club, AVO’s under 19 players, we had to go by road instead, which meant Jarolien and Maaike organising, at short notice, enough of our other host families to take us the 50 minute ride in cars. As Tjerry had organised for us to meet at an Indonesian restaurant for dinner prior to the game, and was not in possession of a cell phone, organising the logistics of all this became somewhat stressful, and we really appreciated the patience and ingenuity of our hosts to ensure the situation was retrieved.
In the end, the effort was well rewarded and we arrived at the Kloosterveste Sporthal, in Kloosterveen just out of the centre of old Assen, to be met by the largest crowd we have played in front of to date, and a team that combined AVO’s A1 and A2 (under 19) squads, including a number of players who have achieved district and international representative status.
Using the fact of our chaotic preparation was no excuse: for the first ten to 15 minutes, our opponents gave us a thorough lesson in korfball. They were seriously good. However, after that we began to find our rhythm, particularly in defence, and first managed to frustrate the AVO team into errors, including a number of shot clock infringements, then put some of our dynamic korfball lessons into practice to make some excellent goals.
Because the match was played in three 30-minute phases, and we used rotation to give all players as much court time as possible, gaining any momentum was not a realistic priority. This was a practice game. Learning to adapt to the pace and skill of players who, despite being more or less our age, have the benefit of ten or more years’ korfball experience, dedication and understanding of the game from a 110 year culture of coaching development, certainly was. We managed some high quality moments, particularly a goal for Alice when her vak-mates Jared, Chelsea and Boris put into practice the principles of dynamic korfball towards the end of the first 30 minute phase. We also learnt how important it was to maintain focus and intensity in defence, as any errors were ruthlessly punished. Another highlight was the return to the court of Jakob, who is managing his troublesome meniscus with a large knee brace, and was able to bring his usual pace, intelligence and determination to the team.
After thanking Tjerry for organising this great opportunity to develop our game, and our opponents for giving us the respect they did, we dragged our fatigued bodies back into the cars, with our ever-tolerant host families, and made our way, extremely wearily though ever so pleasantly, home to Nijeveen.
Tot morgen,
Rob and Bevan
First up we congregated at De Eendracht, some arriving earlier than others to meet with Bevan in the sports hall’s physiotherapy room, where massage, taping and general management of our various niggling injuries is an ongoing process.
Once everyone was strapped up and pieced back together, former Dutch national team coach Jan Soujke van den Bos arrived. For those not familiar with international korfball, Jan Soujke coached The Netherlands for 14 years, accumulating numerous World and European Championships and World Games titles. He is now a roving guru of korfball, involved in international development. He holds a place in our sport that is similar to that of Sir Graham Henry in rugby. Needless to say, having Jan Soujke spend time with us was a huge opportunity to sharpen our understanding of korfball and further develop our skills.
Over a 90 minute training session, Jan Soujke focused on explaining our sport’s latest tactical innovation, which he has been closely involved in developing: dynamic korfball. Overturning many of the past 20 years’ conventional tactical principles, dynamic korfball focuses on making space close enough to the post to give players the maximum chance to score. Emphasis is on making good decisions, followed by sound execution. We have had some experience of dynamic korfball when roving Dutch korfballer Tjerry Steenhuisen was in New Zealand from Assen over the summer. To have it explained in more depth, including full coverage of the philosophy behind it, by such an eminent coach and one of the new system’s originators was a major privilege and enlightening for all the players. It is an exciting and ground-breaking step forward for korfball, which seems set to make our sport more enjoyable to play, to coach and to watch. We are looking forward to developing our understanding of dynamic korfball during the rest of our time in The Netherlands and putting our own spin on it once we arrive home.
After thanking Jan Soujke for giving us so much, we were taken by two DOS ’46 members, Jarolien Flinkert and Maaike Steenbergen, to Giethoorn, a picturesque Dutch village sitting aside a series of canals, surrounded by Weerribben-Wieden National Park, located about eight kilometres from Nijeveen. Jarolien is a member of the host family that Jared and Jayden are staying with and they own what is a large farm by local standards. Maaike is in her final year of a communications degree and a member of the DOS ’46 first team. Their company and guidance made it a memorable excursion.
While the weather was showing no improvement on the past few days, and in fact featured some vicious gale force winds today, bringing the icebergs of the North Sea into our bones, we were determined to enjoy what Giethoorn had to offer, though spent more time indoors than we would otherwise have done, walking along the tow paths and admiring the thatched cottages in what is known as the ‘Venice of the Netherlands’. De Fanfare was our first stop, a café sticking to its original mid-twentieth century ambience, where we enjoyed lunch and were taken into the back room, basically a barn, by host Arie for an indoor archery contest. Despite coach Mark employing his culturally authentic sledging tactics on everyone else, Jayden prevailed to win the competition, though Juliet provided the comedy highlights by first inadvertently turning out the lights, plunging the archers into complete darkness, then almost destroying the archery target.
Our next mission required some improvisation, once again, to our best laid plans. Because the weather was so bad, for the second time in five days our dependence on the national rail service proved misguided as all train services were suspended due to the gale force wind.
To reach Assen, where our friend Tjerry had organised a practice game against his club, AVO’s under 19 players, we had to go by road instead, which meant Jarolien and Maaike organising, at short notice, enough of our other host families to take us the 50 minute ride in cars. As Tjerry had organised for us to meet at an Indonesian restaurant for dinner prior to the game, and was not in possession of a cell phone, organising the logistics of all this became somewhat stressful, and we really appreciated the patience and ingenuity of our hosts to ensure the situation was retrieved.
In the end, the effort was well rewarded and we arrived at the Kloosterveste Sporthal, in Kloosterveen just out of the centre of old Assen, to be met by the largest crowd we have played in front of to date, and a team that combined AVO’s A1 and A2 (under 19) squads, including a number of players who have achieved district and international representative status.
Using the fact of our chaotic preparation was no excuse: for the first ten to 15 minutes, our opponents gave us a thorough lesson in korfball. They were seriously good. However, after that we began to find our rhythm, particularly in defence, and first managed to frustrate the AVO team into errors, including a number of shot clock infringements, then put some of our dynamic korfball lessons into practice to make some excellent goals.
Because the match was played in three 30-minute phases, and we used rotation to give all players as much court time as possible, gaining any momentum was not a realistic priority. This was a practice game. Learning to adapt to the pace and skill of players who, despite being more or less our age, have the benefit of ten or more years’ korfball experience, dedication and understanding of the game from a 110 year culture of coaching development, certainly was. We managed some high quality moments, particularly a goal for Alice when her vak-mates Jared, Chelsea and Boris put into practice the principles of dynamic korfball towards the end of the first 30 minute phase. We also learnt how important it was to maintain focus and intensity in defence, as any errors were ruthlessly punished. Another highlight was the return to the court of Jakob, who is managing his troublesome meniscus with a large knee brace, and was able to bring his usual pace, intelligence and determination to the team.
After thanking Tjerry for organising this great opportunity to develop our game, and our opponents for giving us the respect they did, we dragged our fatigued bodies back into the cars, with our ever-tolerant host families, and made our way, extremely wearily though ever so pleasantly, home to Nijeveen.
Tot morgen,
Rob and Bevan