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Foto: Jeline van Baal / MDNT Lax Program
international

UvA students to compete in Lacrosse World Championship in Israel

Sebastiaan van de Water,
5 april 2018 - 11:02

Three UvA students have been selected to play for the Dutch team to compete in the Lacrosse World Championship in Israel. Who are these sportsmen, and how will they collect the money they need to participate?

Jorrit Duininck (24) is a pre-PhD student at the Faculty of Dentistry

‘I was 19 years old and fed up playing soccer when I discovered another sport at the university sports centre USC: lacrosse. Lacrosse is very small in the Netherlands and we hardly have any sponsors: a problem for a competition like this where every international player has to pay thousands of euros to participate. I took a job to earn the money I need to do so but there's still another challenge: I have to gain ten to twenty pounds to be able to take on the other teams.’

‘I have to gain ten to twenty pounds to be able to take on the other teams’

Bas Verhaar (24), master student business information systems

‘I’ve been playing lacrosse for seven years and I know the Dutch team has never been this strong. Two years ago we ended seventh at the European Championships in Budapest. It was an amazing experience though. In the world championships, our goal is to make it to the top ten. There are another 47 countries participating, with America and Canada being the best by far. We promised each other that we’d get into top condition: some of the team even stopped drinking alcohol in November. But I still have an excuse: on King’s day I’m organising a big party to collect money for my World Cup Pot.’

Matthew Finnegan

Matthew Finnegan (23), student medical information science

‘I never played lacrosse until one and a half years ago before which I played a lot of baseball, so I guess I picked up a few techniques. I didn't expect to be selected for the national team though, and I‘m really looking forward to it even though I still have to find a way to collect the money. I have a lot of family members in the United States so I thought I might ask them, but in the end I expect most of it to come from Uncle DUO.’

 

The world championships will take place on July 12-21 in Israel.