DHC December 2017 Newsletter

Dear DHC enthusiast,

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas. It’s that time of the year where we all wind down and spend some extra time with friends and family. It is also the time where we reflect on what we enjoyed most and make plans to make 2018 even more awesome than 2017!

Fortunately, DHC is in good shape due to all the effort from our members and volunteers. In this mid-year update some of these volunteers have provided their view on the first half of the season, which can be read on the following pages.

Personally, I look back at the first half of the season with pride. This season 18 new ladies and 10 new men joined DHC. Furthermore, the kids club has grown tremendously to 32 kids who enjoy learning the game every Saturday morning. With great numbers come great results. After great results last season, and building our ladies teams in the first division, the HKHA recognized the potential of our woman’s section and promoted our A team to the Premier Division. But it is not only the women who are doing great! The men’s A team has not lost a game this season and is well on track on becoming the number one of the league. The men’s B secured a couple of new talented international players, which led to good results.

Behind the scenes a couple of DHC online marketing gurus are constantly updating our social media presence to provide you with the latest updates and ensure that potential new players know that we are the most fun club to play for. We are active on Instagram, Facebook (where we reached 500 fans for the first time in the history of the club) and have an active blog on our website http://www.dutchhockeyclub.hk You don’t have to remember this link as due to the above and some excellent SEO writing, DHC is the first club who pops up in the search results when Googling Hockey Hong Kong.

Most importantly, I am happy to see that under the excellent guidance from Ali we now have a weekly training attendance of over 30 active players who all enjoy the game and sometimes a drink afterwards. There were many socials and I feel that the club spirit is peaking! Let’s bring this great positive vibe with us to 2018!

On behalf of the whole DHC committee we wish you a healthy 2018 with many enjoyable hockey games!
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Cheers,
Michael Koppert
Chairman DHC

​Check out our More Chaos Video here, and if you would like a copy of our newsletter in PDF, download below. 

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Note from the trainer - Ali Zeeshan

Ho Ho Ho  
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Merry Christmas and happy new year to all of our DHC MINI HOCKEY STARS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Wish you all the very best for the New Year 2018.
 
This year 2017 DHC grew tremendously which brought us some outstanding performances and results. Especially our DHC Ladies A team, who qualified for Premier Division through great effort and dedication. Our Men A are still unbeaten and are on top of the league till the end of the year, which is very impressive. Our men and ladies’ development squads did a great job in their games and their results are quite impressive too.
 
We had great number on trainings and matches, which is very positive sign for DHC especially our development team players attend all the trainings, keep the number high in next session of the league in 2018 and I am very hopeful that in coming days DHC will be one of the biggest Clubs in Hong Kong.
 
I am so happy with the efforts from all of our players which gave me a lot of motivation to work harder. Keep the moment in 2018 see you all in New Year.
 
Best Regards, 
 
Zeeshan Ali
Field Hockey Player- Coach 

Updates from the Ladies Captains

Ladies A – written by Charlotte Brearley
The Ladies A's have got off to a flying start in the first half of the season, having played 9 matches and only losing 1. With a number of new players joining at the start of the season, the team quickly gelled and were a force to be reckoned with, both on and off the field!
 
With Ali’s excellent guidance, we have scored the (joint) highest number of goals of any team, had a rock hard defence and ran rings round the opposition. And off the field, we have barbecued, hot potted, had lots of pitch side ciders (the team’s preferred tipple), dressed up for beer fest and celebrated Christmas festivities. 
 
All members of the team have trained, played and socialised hard which has made for a brilliant first few months. We are very sad to say goodbye to the incredibly talented Maud, Emma and Charlie, who have all been a huge asset to team and will be sorely missed. Thank you girls!  
 
The wonderful team spirit, the dedication and silky skills have led to a mid season promotion to the dizzy heights of the premier league post Christmas. A well deserved outcome and a challenge we’re chomping at the bit for! 

Ladies B team – written by Tiffany Lo
The Ladies B Team was up against quite a challenge this year. Many players from the last season were unable to play again this season either because they moved away, has clashing work schedules, or even some to start a family or move up to the A team! On that note, we definitely benefited from the aggressive recruitment efforts of Liesbeth, Sarah and Kelly-Ann to name a few.
 
We welcomed a lot of new players from far and wide as well as some from other local clubs, but as a result, a lot of work needed to be done to form cohesion and structure within the team. To add to the challenge, we retained our position in the First Division in Women's Hockey and were up against a lot of really tough competitors, most of whom had been training and playing together for much longer.
 
Unfortunately, this has been reflected in our first half-season results, having won just 1 game out of a total 9 played. Regardless of the result, the team has been having fun with every game, with incredible highlights such as our newbie to hockey, Bonnie, scoring her first two lifetime field hockey goals in our win against Aquila A. Aside from that, training numbers have been strong, and with plenty of social events building up team spirit, I'm certain we can finish the next half-season strong. 
 
Also, a big congratulations to the Ladies A Team on completely smashing the First Division and being promoted to the Premier Division for the next half-season!

Updates from the Men's Captains

Men’s A team – written by Sjoerd Reniers
“Men Dutch A, re-grouped, re-motivated and going very strong in the 2nd division of the league” 
 
After our relegation last season from the 1st to the 2nd division there were some doubts how the team will cope with that, whether players would leave or not? 
 
However, at the start of the new season all of our core players showed up and together with some fresh players we immediately started to form our Dutch A team for this season. From the beginning the team showed motivation, dedication and fighting spirit. The number of players for both the training sessions and the matches were higher than they have ever been in last season! Which resulted in the following astonishing figures so far:
 
No 1 in our league standing! 
Out of 12 games, we won 10, drew 2 and did not lose a single match! 
 
This result naturally contributed further to our already high team spirit. After our Christmas break we unfortunately will miss some strong (students) players who returned to the Netherlands to finish their studies. Nevertheless, we are confident and more focused than ever to become CHAMPIONS this season! Go Dutch!!!
 
Men’s B team – written by Bas Fransen
Men Dutch B had a good first half of the season with 5 wins, 3 draws and 5 losses, clearly with an upward trend, also thanks to the outstanding coaching of Ali.
The team has been welcoming a number of great new players, such as The Young Four (Tom, Gavin, Angus and Eric). And new players keep joining the team.
Dutch B now represents 7 nationalities (!), has definitely the potential to do great in the second half of the season!

Junior Hockey Section

What a great start to the hockey year for our Junior Hockey section! We have been blessed to be back at Happy Valley on Saturday mornings, with Coach Ali, his assistants and weekly Senior section helpers all contributing to a growing hockey community. The kids love how Ali puts his drills together, and our U6 kids especially love the fun hockey games where they get to run around and chase their friends.
We welcomed back a number of our previous kids, one of which (Gigi) celebrated her birthday with a Dutch Hockey Cake and have grown to a squad of 32! We celebrated Halloween with a dress up themed Christmas morning, and so far this season we have had two hockey tournaments run by HKFC and HKHA where we entered U10 and two U8 teams in each. Each team improved significantly from the first tournament, some amazing goals scored and growth in each player.
We look forward to the remainder of the season, and are looking to run some summer coaching through Easter and beyond to keep those who are interested active during the summer season. We would also love to have an U12 and even U14 team next year, so if you know any kids who might be interested in joining the spirit of the Dutch.

Kelly-Ann McHugh

Socials

The DHC 2017/18 season got off to a great start in August with a sizzling BBQ at Shek-O beach to welcome in the new season. With a great turn out from our Men's, Ladies and Junior players and parents old and new the Club mixed and mingled enjoying (sort of) the scorching hot day and staying cool with some drinks and a swim before we got the coals burning and the steaks on! A fantastic effort from all who helped shop for food, cook and make sure drinks were topped up. Although there is not much recollection of what really happened towards the end of the night, sore heads the following morning definitely suggest it was an all round success.
 
With the teams now well acquainted and training underway we kicked off September with our first monthly Club social at our Sponsor's bar Mokum! This is where it pays to be early as the first few drinks are always on the Dutch! It was great to see the new players come out to get involved in some "third half" team bonding and once we'd drank the pot dry and had our fill of Bitterballen in Mokum, the keen (and still standing) headed on for some late night dancing and the always inevitable 2am kebab (how our ladies made it to the game the next day is still a mystery)!
 
After a busy October and a false start on the much anticipated annual Oktoberfest, we finally got a Club social in the calendar for early November with Lederhosen and Dirndl's donned and litre of beers in hand this is always one of the funniest nights of this season! Based on the blurred photographic evidence that came through, if you missed this event you definitely missed out, there was German bands with dancing and beer swigging and hilarious carnage to boot, even the journey home which practically took and hour and costs in excess of $300 didn't put a dampener on the night! 
 
With all our teams ending this half of the season on a high (especially for our Ladies A securing a place in the Prem Division from January) we made sure we celebrated properly with a good old fashion local Christmas Party at Tung Po Cooked Food Market. A great turn out from both the men's and ladies’ squads. The party carried on well into the night hitting our usual LKF side street bar for a boogie to the band and as always, 3am kebabs!

Sarah Noonan

Recruitment

We are always looking for new players! Please invite your hockey friends to our training sessions or one of our many social events. We have attached the following flyer to this newsletter. Feel free to share around in your network! Connect with us at our Membership page.