A beautiful Saturday
Youthby Joost van der Schee
It was another beautiful (competition) Saturday. The sun was shining and the birds were singing… everyone was looking forward to it.
My day started with a match of the F. There the children followed the opponent so well that we could give them the instruction to not only follow their opponent, but also the ball. It had an immediate effect on the game and the match was won 7-4. Fantastic to see that kind of progress.
Not much later I was in Huizen. There our, until then, undefeated C team played. That turned out to be more difficult than expected. In the first half Oranje-Nassau was surprised by the warm weather and the good game of Huizen. After the break (and a short pep talk) everyone seemed to realize that it could be much better. In the second half everyone worked very hard to intercept the ball, which made Nassau suddenly the better team. Nassau came back to 4-2. That was not enough for the victory, but it was wonderful to see so much fighting spirit. Afterwards everyone had bright red faces and there was a lot of praise for everyone’s efforts.
After this match it was time for the A2 at KZ in Zaandam. They only had 6 players, so Bas from the B1 of Blauw-Wit played along and Max from our C was called up. Bas is 14, but Max is only 11 years old! A daring move, because the juniors are children from 16 to 19 years old. They both played as women and did a fantastic job. Max even scored twice. Not only Max and Bas, but the entire A2 played incredibly well. They worked very hard for every ball, passed the ball around quickly and motivated each other to catch every shot. That went so well that KZ often lost the ball after 1 shot. At the end of the match we were two goals ahead and won the match! What an achievement. I was very proud.
Of course there were more matches. For example, the D2 team won overwhelmingly (3-27) against the DSO and the D1 team lost 9-1 against DOC. Reason to take another good look at the division of these two teams, because this is not fun for either the opponents or for us. Our third team lost against Helios and our second team managed to win (easily) against a surprised EKVA, which probably had a different image of Oranje-Nassau 2. Our first team unfortunately lost by a tight margin from De Corvers.
Hopefully next week will be another great weekend! I’m already looking forward to it!
