1st day World Korfball Congress

The first day of the IKF World Korfball Congress In Lisbon, Portugal was opened with speeches from the president of our host the FPC, Mr Mario Almeida, Mr Guerreiro, Secretary of State for Sports and Dr Jan Fransoo, IKF President in front of around 60 special guests, IKF delegates and committee members.

The sessions were on;

  1. The IKF Year of the Youth 2013
  2. Refereeing
  3. Development and Education
  4. Equal gender policy.

There was great interest in the subjects and many interesting new suggestions from the audience were added to the ideas and plans presented.

New website for korfball coaches

After last IKF Level IV “High Performance Coach” course was held from 27th August – 1st September 2013, the new website for korfball coaches was launched at www.ikf.org/coachingkorfball .

The website is created to share content about the training and coaching of korfball, so all coaches are invited to log in and share information about their training exercises. At the same time they can find information about coaching materials, courses, etc.

To participate in “Coaching Korfball” website requires logging in including personal information, therefore it will allow IKF to create a database recruiting information from persons involved in coaching at all levels: from P.E. Teachers need to find exercises for their trainings to regular korfball coaches in different parts of the world.

“Coaching Korfball” website contains different sections to feed the background of coaches formation. In the section Training exercises, you may find exercises for trainings at different levels; to IKF Education where there is information about courses and clinics. At the same time there are some other sections as Rules and Promotional , where registered coaches and P.E. Teachers can find materials to show the very basics of korfball.

IKF Africa Year of Youth Event Finished

Saturday 28 September is the IKF Year of Youth 2013 event in IKF AFrica finished with the last clinics.

A whole week several korfball activities were held in Harare (Zimbabwe).

The week started with clinics for coaches and referees, conducted by Mr Riko Kruit and Mr Theo van der Linde. The 23 participants were coming from Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It was a group with mixed experiences and skills, some are involved in korfball in their country for some time yet, and others had no experience at all. It was a challenge for the instructors to keep the clinics for all participants and they succeeded.

Thursday and Friday was the IKF Africa Year of Youth U19 tournament. Unfortunately both Botswana and Mozambique could not realize to send a representative team and had to withdraw. Because of this the U19 teams of Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa played a full competition these two days. The most experienced South African Under 19 squad finished tops at the first ever regional Zone Six Youth Korfball Tournament, making a clean sweep of victory in all their four matches.

As side event during the International Tournament a school korfball tournament outside the sports hall was held. Here could be seen the future for Africa (e.g. Zimbabwe) is sunny, the young players were very enthusiastic, but also showed having already good korfball skills.

As said on Saturday the last clinics were conducted and all teams were going home in knowledge they were part of a historic event.

The press attended the clinics as well the tournament. Friday evening Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) did spend about 10 minutes at prime time to show korfball nationwide.

Also national newspapers reported and were lyric in their reaction.

We strongly believe this event will show to be a big step in development on the African continent.

Results IKF Africa Year of   Youth U19 Tournament
         

26-sep

       
  Zimbabwe Zambia  9 – 3  
  Zambia South   Africa  5 – 15  
  Zimbabwe South   Africa  5 – 17  
         

27-sep

       
  South   Africa Zimbabwe  13 – 4  
  South   Africa Zambia  18 – 0  
  Zambia Zimbabwe  5 – 9  
         
         
Ranking        
  #   matches points scored against
South   Africa

4

12

63

14

Zimbabwe

4

6

27

38

Zambia

4

0

13

51

 

Youth activities in Wales

Cardiff University entered three teams into the Bristol Summer Tournament on June 15th. Roughly 28 players competed with the teams finishing 9th, 10th and 12th out of 24.

The second annual Welsh primary schools’ tournament took place on June 20th in Cardiff with three schools competing. The competition was won by Moorland, followed by Roath Park and Ty’n-y-Wern. Awards were given to the best boy and girl from each team with 36 children taking part all together.

For the first time the annual Korflite summer league in Cardiff featured ‘Youth Korflite’ which offered free Korfball to young players. This ran from the June 11th – July 16th with around 12 children participating each week.

In partnership with Sport Cardiff, Korfball featured in the Urban Games as part of the Olympic legacy in Cardiff on the 27th and 28th of June. As a result approximately 600 school children from 8 secondary schools experienced Korfball. On the 8th and 9th of July Cardiff High School hosted Korfball sessions for 11-14 year olds and roughly another 180 children took the opportunity to try Korfball.

Korfball was also offered to children with learning and behavioural difficulties by Sport Cardiff and a qualified coach lead the session.

Korfball Wales would like to thank Ruth Campbell, Julie Prosser, Zoe Rose, Will Hayward, James MacLeod, Ian Russell, Katherine Trelawny, and James Wilcox for their efforts developing Youth Korfball in Wales.

Year of Youth celebration in the Czech Republic

There were celebrations on Year of Youth in the Czech Republic during the whole month of June. Unfortunately, events (“Obrok” and a beach tournament) originally planned on the first weekend of June were both cancelled. This was because of the bad weather all around the country and the starting floods.

Luckily the biggest action planned, the Czech cup, took place in a beautiful weather and with great performance of young korfball players. In the category U10 were three teams, in U13 eight teams and in U16 five teams. 170 korfball players participated. Kutna Hora won the U10 category. Winner of category U13 was Šenov and in U16 it was Prostějov.

The final speech after the tournament was held by Mr. Hennie Baas, who is the coach of the national teams of the Czech Republic U16 and U19. He reminded all the participants the 80th anniversary of establishing the IKF.

Photos of the Czech Cup

The last prepared action in June was a two-day tournament for primary schools in Brno. 22 class teams competed in 4 age levels. All of the approximately 200 children aged 9 to 15 enjoyed their time playing korfball. Hopefully, we will be able to improve the number of players for next years.

Year of Youth Africa Zone VI U19 korfballevent

From Tuesday 24 September till Sunday 29 September the big African Year of Youth Festival will be held in Harare, Zimbabwe.

It is the first time ever there is an IKF Africa continental event where all Zone VI countries will participate.

Coach and referee clinics will be conducted. Further there is a tournament for representing U19 teams of Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Malawi, Botswana and Mozambique.

All countries are preparing their teams to be able to get a good result.

As side event a korfball tournament for primary schools of Harare will be held.

This primary school event is sponsored by the Swan Fund.

Worldwide Korfball Match on the International Youth Korfball Day

This year the Hungarian Korfball Association decided (besides to another project) to organize a Worldwide Korfball Match on 15 June. The idea that originally came from Miklós Turchányi was simple: everybody could participate by organizing some kind of a korfball contest/match, where the teams were called Korfs and Balls. We collected the results on a special Sportwavez.com website dedicated to the event, where participants could easily register and upload their scores. Based on these scores, the website calculated the overall worldwide score in real time.

After an intensive campaign that ran for 3 weeks mostly on Facebook, 20 countries (and 97 individuals on Facebook) joined the event: in alphabetic order, they were Australia, Brazil, Belarus, Catalunya, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong China, Hungary, Nepal, Netherlands, Romania, Scotland, Slovakia, Sweden, Taiwan, UK, USA, Zambia, Zimbabwe. It is one third of all members of the International Korfball Federation, and we had participants from all the continents (except from Antarctica). We were happy to see the results from North- and South America, and never before there were so many korfball activities in Africa.

The final result was 899 : 827 for the Balls team(s), which means 1726 goals scored worldwide.

The top scoring countries were:

Catalunya: 413 goals

Hungary: 309 goals

Germany: 175 goals

Taiwan: 166 goals

Sweden: 113 goals

Nepal: 105 goals

Slovakia: 96 goals

Zambia: 73 goals

Hong-Kong China: 56 goals

Romania: 48 goals

Brazil: 41 goals

Ghana: 33 goals

Greece: 26 goals

The Netherlands: 20 goals

UK: 19 goals

USA: 19 goals

Australia: 14 goals

We were happy to see a very enthusiastic participation from smaller korfball countries, while the bigger ones showed less interest in this project. It shows that such events can be used as promotion events in the developing korfball countries.

We organized this event with a bottom-up approach, meaning that we didn’t ask countries to participate, but we provided an easy-to use and fun environment where all interested individuals, clubs and national federations could participate. I think it is a method to be utilized also in the future: we have to provide a framework that the countries can fill with their own activities. It means flexibility from the organizers’ side, and more emphasis on activities that the korfball countries would really like to be involved in.

Finally, something about the technical background of the event:

The website on Sportwavez.com (http://sportwavez.com/seasons/worldwide-korfball-worldwide-korfball-match) provided an easy-to use online tool to post all results in real time, with a professional look, tailored to the event.

The Facebook event: (http://www.facebook.com/events/563413473709807) was the fastest and most effective way to create a campaign among korfballers around the world.

 

Bandor Nagy

Youth Development Weekend in Australia

Year of the Youth – Development Weekend Australia June 8th & 9th

To celebrate Korfball’s International Year of the Youth a Youth Development Weekend was held in conjunction with the National Club Championships in Melbourne. The weekend saw over 40 players aged 21 or under participate in trainings and games from 4 States in Australia and a group from Christchurch New Zealand.

Some of the highlights for the weekend were:

  1. The development group playing against a legends team consisting of previous Australian Team players and coaches along with some players from the Netherlands and Belgium.
  2. The awarding of the Korfball Youth Leadership Awards at the tournament dinner where we had recipients in all the three levels. There were xxx Bronze, xxx Silver and xxx Gold.
  3. The match between the combined Australian youth development group and the Christchurch NZ youth development group. This game was played on a full size court at a high standard.

 

Mark Zilm
President Korfball Australia

 

Pictures and more information about the weekend can be found in the June newsletter.

Korfball Australia YOY News – June 2013

 

 

Live webcasting – Youth korfball

Saturday 22 June the YouTube Korfball Channel  – ikfchannel – will show youth korfball amongst others in LIVE webcasting.

In the city of Dordrecht,The Netherlands, this Saturday the KNKV organises the finals in the outdoor competition. The Local Organising Committee of the clubs in Dordrecht, the city council of Dordrecht  and the KNKV support related to the Year of the Youth 2013 the webcasting project.

The following matches will go live to the world (all starting times are in Amsterdam time zone):

Youth till 13 years; starting 1100 AM : Oranje Wit C1 – Achilles C1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msBdh32l2tA

Youth till 16 years; starting 1330 PM : DeetosSnel B1 – GroenGeel B1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkYFEY9ghMs

Youth till 19 years; starting 1700 PM :  DSC A1 – Fortuna/MHIR A1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maKwTdq3IwY

Seniors; starting 1900 PM :  PKC/Hagero – Blauw Wit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1CrATpZ014

 

 

Celebration of the International Youth Korfball Day in Scotland

A short report on Scotland’s activities on 15th June for the Year of the Youth celebrations

Over 500 children in Scotland have been introduced to korfball in the last six weeks as part of Scotland’s Year of the Youth project, which culminated in Dundee on Saturday with the inaugural Scottish Schools Open championship.

29 participants from six schools enjoyed skills training and a number of short-form games as Scotland played its part in the largest korfball match in history- the Korfs beat the Balls, 39 – 19.

A three-way round robin was then played for the main prize of the afternoon- the Scottish Schools Open shield- which was won by Lawhead Primary from St Andrews. Lawhead beat both Birkhill Primary and a Rest of Scotland team en route to the trophy. The coach of the winning team, fittingly, was among the first people to bring korfball to Scotland over twenty years ago.

A taster session was also held in Glasgow on Friday, and there are plans for further such sessions in Glasgow and Edinburgh.  Scotland’s youth development is set to continue well beyond the Year of the Youth!

Type of Activity:  A six week programme of taster sessions in schools, culminating in the first ever Scottish Schools Open championship.

Number of Participants:  Over 500 children attended taster and training sessions over the six week period, over 300 of whom were new to the sport. 29 children competed in the Scottish Schools Open competition.

Number of Spectators: Around 20

Winner: Lawhead Primary School (based in St Andrews, Fife); the Korfs (39-19)