Hockey player Elsemieke Havenga: “A good insight into the game was my greatest strength”

At home at Huize Hillen there was a hockey stick in the hallway, because Dad Hillen was a hockey player. Yet it was not a foregone conclusion that daughter Elsemieke would also play hockey. She was also the best at tennis. As a girl, for example, she already played tournaments with contemporary Marcella Mesker. In the end it became hockey. “Because in the end I am a team athlete.”

Number 9

The Orange shirt with number 9 on it hangs in her office, the number she would wear throughout her international career. “I joined the Dutch team, apparently the number was free then, and I’ve hardly been out. Then it’s easy to keep your number.”

When asked whether a fixed number is important, Elsemieke has to think deeply. “Yes”, is her answer, “it is recognizable, it belongs to you, but of course it makes no sense.” As with football, it did not guarantee a permanent place in the dressing room. “Whoever came first dumped their stuff somewhere.”

Ringleader

Unnoticed, as she herself says, Elsemieke kept coming up on a higher team. Until she made her debut at the highest level at the age of thirteen. “I went to higher teams very quickly. With hockey I was always first-rate. I always won. Give me that ball and I did it. Then you notice that you are the best.”

Her rapid rise was partly due to the introduction of artificial grass, which not all ladies could handle. “I started on grass and then came the artificial grass. We didn’t even know what kind of shoes we needed for that. The first year we had a World Cup on artificial grass, that was in Madrid, then we tried everything. completely different sport.”

Game Insight

“My greatest strength was my understanding of the game,” says Elsemieke. I was able to set someone free in front of the goal. Then everyone thought: ‘where is that ball going?’ But then I would have seen that there was that opening. I was able to speed up the game with a very nice pass. I was also very technical, so I could also get that ball where I wanted. I could also outplay someone easily, but I wasn’t that fast.”

golden generation

For years, Elsemieke Havenga-Hillen was part of a golden generation of hockey players. “We had a lot of girls who were good. We had a permanent core with Marjolein Eijsvogel, Sandra Le Poole, Lisette Sevens, Carina Benninga and goalkeeper Det de Beus. That has created a very stable core.”

She continues: “In 1984, a high point was reached with the winning of Olympic gold in Los Angeles. Four years earlier, women’s hockey was on the Olympic program for the first time, but the Netherlands, and many other countries, boycotted the Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion. in Afghanistan. Even then, the hockey players were top favorites. After the win in 1984, it took another 24 years before the ladies would win gold again. “You think those hockey ladies always win gold, now they do, but not then.”

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