National Lottery takes SA to Korfball Commonwealth Games
The National Lottery and Nashua Pretoria are the names backing the SA International Korfball squad for the Korfball Commonwealth Games, being held in London 14-16 July 2006. The National Lottery, as the main sponsor, has covered the cost of all flights, accommodation, and basic living expenses, and Nashua Pretoria has provided all sports wear, along with And1 Sports Gear, sponsors of the team's basketball shoes. Bizcommunity.com's Johannesburg account executive, Gee Friedman, is part of the South African team.
Friedman has been involved with Korfball since 1995 when she began her career as part of the Natal u19 squad who won the SA Championships that year. She went on to represent Natal Senior A (1996), Boland Senior A (1997/8), and SA u23 (1996-8) who toured Europe in 1996. Friedman then took time off in 1999 to travel, and later joined the Tooting Bec Korfball team in London in 2000 - she will now be playing opposite some of her previous team mates!
The squad of fourteen players will participate in a round robin tournament against England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, India, USA, and Australia at the Whitgift Indoor Centre in Croydon, London. As a warm-up to the Games, the team will spend two weeks in Portugal, taking part in the Go Korfball Academy. They will be competing in a friendly tournament against several top European teams, as well assisting with the coaching of junior players aged 10-16 years.
Korfball is a team ball game, similar in many ways to netball and basketball. It is played in over forty countries around the world, including Netherlands and Belgium, which are ranked first and second respectively in the World Rankings.
Korfball differs from other team sports in that it is a mixed-gender game: a team consists of four men and four women. The story goes that at the beginning of the 20th century, a Dutch school teacher called Nico Broekhuysen was looking for a game that both the boys and girls in his class could play. In 1902 he played a game called ringboll while in Sweden. Back in the Netherlands, he then devised the rules for korfball.
