BELVEDERE--—Hockey is returning to the Friendly Island. Sticks will be lowered and the ball smashed toward goal as the St. Maarten Hockey Club once against hosts Aruba and Curacao in a five-team competition on the Cruyff Court in Belvedere both Saturday and Sunday.
Aruba will field two teams, Curacao one and the hosts two.
Action begins at 10:00am Saturday. Three games will be played before lunch. Games are two 15 minutes halves with a five minute break in between. There will be a one-hour break before play resumes and is expected to finish for the day at 5:45pm.
The game for third place will be played Sunday starting at 10:00am and will be followed by the championship game expected to start at 11:00am.
“Curacao won our last tournament,” said Willem Dekker, one of the organizers. “They play a lot of league games. We only have a few players and play twice a week.”
St. Maarten last hosted a tournament five years ago. In the final match Curaçao faced St. Maarten Team 1 and won 4-0. St. Maarten team 2 placed third.
Hockey has been played on St. Maarten for a long time. The club was founded in 1996 with only 7 members and eventually grew into a group of 20. The club boasts several seasoned veterans and come and go players that are interns on job study programmes from The Netherlands.
Several members of the club travel off island each year to compete in reginal events.
“For us this is a fun event,” said Dekker. “We just want the other players to come, enjoy the island have some fun and look forward to coming back.”
Field hockey is normally played outdoors on an approximately soccer size pitch with 11 players on a side. There is an indoor version played on a basketball size court with four players and a goalkeeper each side.
This weekend, the tournament is played on the artificial grass at the court in Belvedere and teams will be allowed to field five players and a goalkeeper at a time.
St. Maarten has evenly divided their members between their two teams.
The tournament is sponsored by Heineken, Heavenly Water, Holland House and SOAB the government internal auditor.
