No less than 600 participants in the NK Kubb will make a shot at the Dutch title in Nijeveen on Saturday. The fields of SVN’69 are teeming with stick-throwing fanatics.
Kubb club De Losse Pols organizes the National Championships. Jelle Homans is from the club and therefore knows exactly what Kubb is. “It is a Swedish offside. A kind of combination between bowling and jeux de boules. It is a team sport, you play it 6 against 6. The aim is to knock over the cubes and then knock over the king in the middle and then you have you won.”
As Homans puts it, it sounds simple, but with 96 participating teams, a winner has to travel a long way. It also starts in the group stage for defending champions ‘Black Kubb Masters’ from Rotterdam. “A little bit of tactics, a little bit of technique and otherwise keep your head up” explains Jacco Groeneweg of the ‘Black Kubb Masters’. “It’s just a matter of concentration.”
Homans won the tournament in 2019. After that, it was always canceled due to the corona measures. Still, the profit is still clear to him. “It is especially fun, but if you win it there is a discharge. And if you can pick up the prize and leave that cup at home for a year, that is wonderful to experience.”
The participants are happy that the National Championships will be organized again. Incidentally, there are more prizes to be won than just those for the country’s best Kubb team. A costume prize and a prize for the best atmosphere are also the main goal for some teams. “It’s a top camping sport” laughs Jelle Homans. “If you look around here, you see that people experience it in very different ways. But the bottom line is that it’s fun to do, and some are more fanatical than others.”
For four years, the Black Kubb Masters were allowed to call themselves the best kubb players in the country, but Homans did not pride himself on that on vacation. “A lot of people don’t even know what kubb is. If you say ‘with those wooden blocks what they play at the campsite’ then they suddenly know. And that you are Dutch champion, then you are the boss of the campsite as it were, but nothing more than that.”