The handball players of Drenth Group Hurry-Up defeated Handbal Houten 38-31 in Zwartemeer. The victory was secured in the second half when the visitors could no longer keep up with the high tempo.
Hurry-Up did good business in the future battle for the Dutch championship. This will start in a few weeks when the current competition in the cross-border BeNe League has ended. Due to the victory against Houten on Saturday evening, the Zwartemeerders will at least finish fourth among the Dutch teams. This gives the men of coach Sven Hemmes a bonus point in the battle for the Dutch title.
Hurry-Up had a lot of trouble making a difference against Houten in the first half. A nice playing team came to visit with the Utrecht team with a number of hard-hitting players. The left-handed Ruben de Bok in particular made his presence felt. He became top scorer for Houten with eleven goals.
The coverage is not good
Hurry-Up also made it too easy for him and other Houten shooters in the first half. The home team’s coverage was not good and gave Houten too many opportunities to shoot. That only led to a tiny 18-17 lead for Hurry-Up at halftime against a team that is much lower in the standings.
In the second half, Hurry-Up started to show the difference in potential and quality more and more often. Houten was played to pieces more and more at a high pace and was less able to keep up. A leading role for the Zwartemeerders was reserved for the outstanding Sjoerd Boonstra. The extremely strong circle runner was repeatedly found in a free position by his fellow players, after which he finished fatally. He scored seven times.
Sjoerd Boonstra is hard to stop
Boonstra could also often only be stopped with a foul. This resulted in Hurry-Up penalty shots that were impeccably converted into goals by the Hungarian Dániel Takó. Takó became Hurry-Up’s top scorer with eight goals. Houten started to make more mistakes and the match definitely turned in favor of the home team.
Fifteen minutes before the end, the Drenthe were already ahead 31-26 and could no longer miss the deserved victory. This was partly due to the good performance of substitute goalkeeper Senn Rijsdijk. Because regular goalkeeper Boris Tot may have broken his finger, Hemmes had included his young colleague in the selection. Rijsdijk did surprisingly well in the Hurry-Up goal with a number of beautiful saves.
Senn Rijsdijk has not forgotten goalkeeping
That was all the more remarkable because Rijsdijk had actually stopped as a goalkeeper. He started playing football and played as a handball player with the third team of Hurry-Up. Not in goal, but as a field player. Last week he only made his first training minutes as a goalkeeper in a long time. It turned out he hadn’t forgotten it yet.