Yvanka de Reus (17) is the first woman and the youngest participant at the European Construction Carpentry Championships in Cologne. What does she expect?
While most of her peers were still building castles in the air, Yvanka the Giant had been working with a real hammer for a long time. Because when she was 11, her parents had their house renovated and she thought it was so wonderful that she has seen her future very clearly ever since.
‘I just wanted to carpentry and build houses,’ she says. ‘Besides, I wanted to get rid of those newspaper routes and do something more forward-looking, so I asked if I could be apprenticed to that man.’
She was allowed to do this as soon as she was 12 and only on Saturdays, with the result that barely five years later she is the first female Dutch champion construction carpentry ever and from tomorrow in Cologne she will also become the first female participant ever at a European Championship. And oh yes, at 17 years old she is also the youngest participant in a European Construction Carpentry Championship ever.
Just in between: that until now you had no idea that there was such a thing as the European Construction Carpentry Championship, is absolutely no shame. Yvanka herself didn’t know that either when she started her secondary vocational education in Heerhugowaard last year. She only found out when one of her teachers from Horizon College and co-trainer Espeq, Hans Neefjes, saw her in class for the first time and was apparently so impressed that he asked: isn’t such a competition right for you? ?
These kinds of competitions are intended to put MBO professions in a somewhat shinier light and thus convince students that their work is not only a vehicle to earn money, but above all something to be proud of.
During such a competition, the participants have to put together the most beautiful roof construction possible in three days. At the European Championships, the Germans – boys who grew up in wooden chalets and were not only taught carpentry, but probably also had to chisel that spoon themselves – are the big favourites, says Yvanka. ‘In Germany you are really admired if you can be at the European Championship.’
That is also the most exciting part of the European Championship, because how do your hands function when dozens of German spectators are watching your fingers? Will those fingers still manage to plane the right piece of pine with the same military precision?
Because she will attract a lot of attention as the first female participant, that’s for sure. She is not really proud of that, because construction should not be a man’s world at all, in her opinion.
‘Sure, if I have to carry blocks, my colleague manages to do twelve, while I walk with four or six,’ she says. ‘Of course you love that. But if you’re not strong, you’ll learn to get smarter. In such a case I look for the shorter paths.’
That cleverness is what, in her own words, also makes her so good. As soon as she sees a top and side view of a roof construction to be built – for a layman a kind of incomprehensible jumble of intersecting lines – Yvanka immediately gets a three-dimensional picture of the end product in her head.
“And of course I am and will always be a girl, so I’m very precise.”
Girls have even more advantages this way, she says. For example, during a school day, boys may suddenly be overcome by an almost exasperating indifference that makes them hardly listen to the master. Or they suddenly act very magnanimous and wise, so that they are convinced that they already know everything.
‘Boys often don’t let themselves be told, but then you learn so little’, says Yvanka. ‘Girls don’t hesitate to ask questions.’
Incidentally, she will soon have a major disadvantage in Cologne. After her victory at the Dutch Championships, she thought that her next match would be the World Cup in Shanghai, next October. But when that World Cup could not take place because of corona, she was registered head over heels for the European Championship in Cologne, with the result that she only had three and a half weeks of training time.
That’s a big flaw, because umpires in building carpentry competitions are tough as nails – every crack and every protruding piece of wood is worth minus points. That is why she does not take into account that she will become champion in the future. She just doesn’t hope that she will be last without a chance due to lack of training. Then everyone will say: well, that’s what you get when you let a girl participate in a men’s sport.
‘I don’t need to become a champion’, says Yvanka. ‘I just hope I’ll be my man soon. Or I mean: my wife.’