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Dear DHC enthusiast, Happy New Year! We hope you had a nice few days off with family and friends! We take this opportunity to take a moment to look back on what we achieved in 2018, and look forward to 2019! The first half of the season flew by! Our numbers of members are still constantly growing and we are happy to welcome so many new players to the club! Both on the Ladies and Men’s side we even had players on the waitlist to play. We hope that for the second half of the season we can give everyone a spot to play games on the weekends. We are also always thankful to the students that join us, and share their (still young) energy with us, and even make some of the winning goals! After great results of last season we had some teams moving up a Division. For the Men’s A it is a tough competition, we have had some hard-fought games and wins this season. Our Men’s B are leading with the most wins in the first half of the season, great job! Maybe not awarded by many wins yet, both Ladies teams are improving with each game, and I am sure that the wins will come in the second half of the season! Our kids club has expanded over the first half of the season as well, and under the great guidance of Zeeshan and Kelly-Ann achieved their first tournament runner-up place & player of the tournament awards! It is amazing to see how quickly the kids pick up the game, and get more and more feeling for scoring goals, while also trying to find their favourite position on the field! I am proud to see that the club is still the place for young and old to get together, enjoy the sport and also enjoy the many socials organized by our social duo! From Halloween, Sinterklaas and Christmas with the kids, to borrels and Tung Po dinners with the older. Where every time newbies to Hong Kong are welcomed as well. Let’s keep this positive spirit for 2019! We are looking forward to the many more games to come in the second half of the season, and of course the many chances we will get to get together for a drink on our socials. On behalf of the whole DHC committee we wish you a healthy 2019 with many enjoyable hockey games, goals & third half winners! Cheers, Liesbeth van der Zee Chairwoman DHC CONTINUED BELOW 
Note from the Coach - Zeeshan AliHappy new year to all of our DHC mini hockey stars, ladies and gentlemen. I wish you all the very best for the New Year 2019. We had a successful season 2017-2018 which gave us great pleasure and determination for this season 2018-2019. This season DHC recruited a lot of new faces and in a very short amount of time and I am happy that we were able to balance our teams during the first half of the league. Both the Men A and Ladies A teams had a great challenge this season because of their last year promotions, and therefore we needed to change our game. We tried new tactics and had tough times in the beginning when we faced some of the top teams in the league early on in the season. But I can proudly say that our players have great adoption skills! They picked up the new tactics and skills very well. As we were going on the break, we finally started getting the results: in the last game our Men A won by 5-0 and Ladies A won by 2-1! Great effort of both teams! Also important, our development teams, Men B and Ladies B, where we have some very new players, had great results. Especially our Men B was unbeaten for the last 6 games! I am very delighted with their performance. Our ladies B also had their moments when they played very close games against the top rivals, however we are still working hard on improving, in this team that also has many beginners. I am proud of the huge turnout we had for the summer trainings where we had more than 40 players at a time. Great news is that we have received back our training slot on Tuesdays, so that our players can make the training time again and keep the numbers high in 2019 as well. Our Mini hockey (“Stars”) stepped into a new age group U12 and we are looking forward to recruit U12 players to make this group bigger. In season 2018-2019 DHC mini hockey has 4 age groups, (U6, U8, U10, and U12), with lots of talented kids! I am proud to mention our U8 player James got the best player Award in the tournament in November 2018. In the end, I would like to thank all the Coaches, Trainers, Parents DHC officials and our visiting players who helped us during the first half of the season for playing, coaching, and helping out. Thanks once again and looking forward to see you all in New Year. Good luck everyone for the 2019. Best Regards. Zeeshan Ali FIH High Performance Coach CONTINUED BELOW A note from the Captains
LADIES B - TIFFANY Another year, another season, another set of new challenges. This season, we found ourselves once again battling it out in the First Division. But thanks to massive recruiting efforts from everyone, in particular, our Ladies VP and Convener, Pleuni and Tessa, we welcomed a lot of new faces to our team. We had steady numbers and regular players for much of the season - a first in many years! Being still a relatively new team, we faced tough competition in the First Division with most other teams having played together for many years, and have yet to see a win. However, thanks to the great effort of the team to make it to trainings despite difficulties with securing a regular pitch time, and of course, the guidance and support from our coach Ali, there is marked improvement and progress! In the second half of the season, we will unfortunately be saying goodbye to a lot of players: our vice-captain Jorinde will be leaving to Singapore, and our visiting exchange students will be returning to Europe. That being said, teamsnap availabilities are being filled in quickly, attendance is still looking good, and a steady stream of socials are keeping spirits high and smiles bright. Dutch Men's A - Sjoerd & Michael DHC has a long and rich history of attracting the best players (both on and off the pitch) and the first half of the season was no difference. If you thought being promoted to the first division was a big achievement, then you must be totally impressed with the recruitment of ten new international players to the A team at the start of this season. Adding ‘Les Trois Mousquetaires’ (Bertrand, Louis and Albin) and their ‘écuyer’ (Victor) lead to some extra goals (especially from Victor who ended up in the top 10 top scorer list from the league). However it wasn’t enough to push the team to the top 6 (aka het linker rijtje). Where we were much better at was finding each other in the Hong Kong bars and the many socials organized by the DHC committee. Starting with the start of the season drinks in 238, cashing in during the horse race event and for some of us even making some moves in Wan Chai afterwards, where Floris showed that he is not only a great dancer in the field. Another big highlight was the Octoberfest celebration, or so I have been told as I only recall the smell of Jägermeister the next day. Last but not least the Santa / Sinterklaas celebration was a huge success where Michael Groll entertained us with his German Christmas poem in his top of the notch Father Christmas outfit! What became clear is that all these social events contributed greatly to our playing style, or maybe it was some excellent training sessions and coaching by Ali. In either way we started playing much closer together in the last couple of matches resulting in some great results closing the season with a convincing 5-0 win! Let’s bring this positive vibe with us to 2019 in which we will have fixed training day and time, every Tuesday from 20.00 – 21.30, hope to see many of you there! Men’s B team – written by Bas Great start for Dutch Men B With 13 matches played, the Men B ended the first half of the season 4th out of 12. This is an amazing performance especially taking into account that the number 1 and 2 of the league are all ex-Premier players who are trying to “take it easy”. Jelmer and Ben both ended up 12th in the top scorer list, with the ambition to make the top 10 in the second half of the season (). As most know, the Men B not only rule the first and second half (thank you Ali), but also the third half! That third half takes place either at the Jockey, or in front of the Jockey with better beers from 7/11, or at the amazing rooftop of Michael (thank you Michael), or recently at our latest discovery, Feather and Bones in Happy Valley. Thank you Hans (R) for co-captaining, all the best in Singapore and see you coming year in Hong Kong at ZOAT 2019. Bas Fransen The Kind Dear Leader CONTINUED BELOW Junior Hockey SectionThe DHC Junior section is ever growing, after two years ago roughly 15 kids, we are now up around 40 kids each week, learning valuable skills related to field hockey, teamwork and sport. We have welcomed students from Sweden, Australia, London, Hong Kong, Netherlands and I'm sure other regions to the group this year, a truly multi-cultural experience for our students. The first half saw us establish our first Under 12 team at the Hong Kong Football Club tournament, we unfortunately (randomly) placed in the tougher division, but wow what a valuable learning experience with kids from the ages of 9-11 participating, we also had a group have their first game in Under 10 division, and our budding Under 8 team managed to make it to the Knock-out finals. There were definitely some lessons learned about the difficulties of losing, but some fantastic improvements and learnings which should see our teams do great in the upcoming tournaments of the second half of the year. We are already planning for 2019-2020 with requests going in for both a weekday & weekend training session to really help our teams grow and develop. If anyone has friends in the U14, U12 category we would love to have them join us so we can develop a strong Youth Division team as well from 2020. Club Socials 2018The planning was to have at least one social event every month and we’ve managed to realize that. As men and woman are not having matches on the same day like in The Netherlands the goal is mainly to give people the opportunity to socialize and get to know people from other teams as well. This year we started the hockey season off with a barbeque at Bens Back Beach Bar in Shek O. Where we had lovely weather, amazing Argentinean meat and a great turn out! The barbeques were manned by different members of the club, both young and old were helping to make this event one to remember. All in all a great start of the season. Following the barbeque we had a great get together during Happy Wednesday horse races end of September. Where the bets were placed, some won, some lost but most of all people were having fun. The majority made a profit, which they then spend in Wanchai later that evening. Which made it a though day at work on the Thursday but a memorable happy Wednesday. As we’re called the Dutch hockey club we like to go back to our roots every once in a while and have an evening of Dutch ‘gezelligheid’ during the so called ‘borrel’. A new concept to some of our non-Dutch members, who gave feedback that they very much liked this typical Dutch concept. The best part of it all was that Restaurant 238 was able to provide is with delicious Dutch snacks and food and for a second gave us the idea we’re having a ‘borrel’ in The Netherlands. The fourth event of the year took us back to Europe again but this time to our next door neighbours, Germany. Every year the Marco Polo Hotel organizes the Oktoberfest, and also this year the DHCHK was represented. Equipped with Lederhosen, Dirndle’s and beer mugs the night could start. The band was amazing and although no member of the DHC won the prize for the horn blowing the evening was still a great success. And then the first half of the season has flown by, but luckily Sinter Claus gathering allowed members to get together one more time before the holiday season started and many people go abroad to celebrate Christmas and New Year. Best part of the evening was that Santa Claus himself stopped by!! He also spoke a few words that Sinterklaas had sent him before he wished everyone a merry Christmas, and those we had been good this year received a gift! Santa’s visit gave this social a special touch and brought the holiday spirit to live! For next half of the season we’ve got exciting social events to look forward to. We’ll not spoil everything, but you can expect that we kick off the new year in style, with a Hong Kong style CNY celebration. Naturally we’ll close off the season with a Junk, but what happens in between that time we’ll keep secret for now. The social team wishes everyone happy holidays and we look forward seeing you all in the new year! Judith Zonneveld & Dorus Reuwer Comments are closed.
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DHC CommitteeThe DHC Committee unites the club with a series of social events, co-ordination of the season. Hear more about what the Dutch Hockey Club in Hong Kong is up to. Remember all welcome! Archives
March 2019
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