By: Rick Keizer
The story started a year ago. We won Hargen (National Beach Championships) and secured the spot for the WBUCC (World Beach Championships). For the last year we trained like never before! Extra stamina practice, gym practice, beach practices in the weekends and more.
The week trained so hard for arrived! It was now or never, which to be honest also was quite stressful. The journey to Portimão, Portugal, went smoothly. Robbin wasn’t scared in the plane, Siebe slept like a baby, and I watched a whole season on Netflix in one go. We landed in Faro and travelled to our modest residence for the coming 1.5 weeks: a €7.9million villa with cactus garden, swimming pool, tennis court, pool table, multiple bedrooms, and 10 cats.
Our first 2 days were spent swimming, hiking and getting used to the weather. On Sunday the real deal began. We had our last beach practice on the WBUCC fields. This was our first time seeing the beach and all the fields. The venue was enormous. I am not kidding that the fields were going on forever. Practice went quite well for everyone except two. Me and Robbin got sick to the point that Robbin wasn’t able to play for the first 2 days and I had no stamina left. A stressful situation for both.
Monday arrived: the first game was against Canada (Ocelots). They had the second bit which meant they were second in the world. This scared us in the beginning. However, we managed to win from them! The emotions I saw on the field cannot be described. Robbin even ran on the field full of excitement after a score. Vincent celebrated his first goal with the “Praying Mantis” move in honor of Pepijn’s dad.
Speaking of supporters. We had a lot. Siebe’s father wrote a song that I think is now popular over all the teams we played against. Pepijn’s brother livestreamed all the matches which provided our home supporters with some fun commentary. All the supporters were so warming, and energetic that I do believe that we won some matches due to them.
Ultimately, WAF ended up 34th of the world. That might sound bad, however, don’t forget this is 34th of ALL TEAMS in the world! And besides that all our matches were a sure fight. We have lost a couple of matches with only 1 to 3 points difference, which is not a lot. If we had a bit more focus and luck in the beginning we surely would have been able to make it higher!
I am so happy that we managed to go to WBUCC with a team that consists of only WAF-players and no pickups. We as an association can really be proud of that!
Now it is team for rest. But not for too long. We need to prepare for the EBUCC (European Beach Championships) soon.
Who let the dogs out? WAF WAF WAF WAF! (and the supporters)