Records have not just been broken, they have been smashed at the Dutch club HC Rotterdam as more than 1,000 players and coaches turned up to take part in the world’s largest hockey training session.
Although attracting new players was not a primary ambition of the club, it was an occasion that is sure to have brought more attention to a sport that is already hugely popular in the European country.
Alexander Bakker is a member of the record-breaking club and he explains why the club was so keen to get into the Guinness Book of Records: “The record attempt was part of a series of festivities linked to the club’s 90th anniversary.”
Bakker revealed that HC Rotterdam had competition to make it into the record book as rival club HC Rijswick had also held a massive training day that attracted in excess of 700 people.
HC Rotterdam’s first target of attracting 519 people to training was not going to be enough to break the record, so the club’s administrators pulled out all the stops to encourage bigger numbers of players to attend. Bakker could barely contain his pleasure as he said: “Maybe they will try to beat us again, but it will be hard to beat this record.”
HC Rotterdam is one of the largest hockey clubs in the Netherlands with in excess of 2,000 members but the logistics of providing training for 1,042 people at one time would have been a headache for the most talented of coaches.
A video released, which you can watch below, shows that not only was the day a huge success but there were plenty of young players in attendance who would be pushing for places in the top teams of the club and possibly the country. “Our youngest participant was just five years old,” said Bakker.
This is just the sort of activity that promotes the great values of hockey – family, friendship, activity and high quality coaching – all of which are intrinsic to the FIH Hockey Revolution and it’s 10-year strategy aimed at making the sport a global game that inspires the next generation. For more information about the Hockey Revolution, click here.
To find out more about HC Rotterdam, click here. For those wanting to get into hockey elsewhere in the Netherlands, click here.
VIDEO
