Twelve wheelchair hockey players have been detained for some time this afternoon in the canteen of sports hall Het Activium in Hoogeveen. They could no longer go down due to a broken lift. “Because of this there was a line through the last game of the hockey tournament.
It was the last competition round in the Northern Netherlands for the electric wheelchair hockey players. Today the champion would be known. But just before the last game of the afternoon, the elevator to the canteen of the Activium no longer wanted to go up.
“He didn’t do it anymore”, Willy van Lent from the organizing association The E-Team Emmen looks. “Twelve people couldn’t go down. Fortunately, nobody was stuck in the elevator.”
But a non-working lift is very awkward in people who can’t or hardly walk. That is why the fire brigade pulled out to help the unfortunate athletes and two engineers also arrived.
“The firefighters have reassured everyone. There was no panic,” Van Lent looks back. The engineers tried to repair the lift, but could not discover the problem. That meant that the wheelchair hockey players had to go down in a different way. “Everyone who could still walk a little, we helped down with the help of the fire brigade, caregivers and first aiders. The people who could not get out of the wheelchair are carefully lifted down.” A big job, because an electric wheelchair including owner quickly weighs more than three hundred kilos.
Van Lent calls it bad bad luck, but according to him the day for the participants of the tournament was no less fun. “I look back on it positively. The last match we ended in a regulatory draw. As a result, the third team of our association has become champion of the North.”
In the end, a champion party was not there. “That no longer worked. Some players were already picked up by taxi. But in two weeks we will have another training in Emmen. Then we will celebrate it there.