50 years of ACLO sports centre

Last Saturday, the Dutch women’s volleyball team kicked off the celebrations with an international practice match against Germany, beating them three to two. On Friday, there will be a campus trail, where running fanatics get to run four miles through the buildings at the Zernike campus.

The club will also present the anniversary book that day. The UK spoke to its two authors, Koos Kuiper and Kaj Reker. Between them, they have more than sixty years of experience at the sports centre. What is it that makes ACLO so unique, and how has the sports centre changed over the past five decades?

Never finished

In 1976, Reker visits the sports centre for the very first time. He is a student who likes to play basketball. Four years later, he is appointed basketball coach, although he is initially paid under the counter.

Kuiper has been playing table tennis since 1970 and becomes a coach in 1989. In the years that follow, both teach and train people in squash. They also perform various editorial duties, including for the now defunct ‘newspaper for university sports’. They were not surprised, then, when they were approached to put together the anniversary book in April this year.

But it is not a simple task. Reker: ‘The ultimate sports centre book doesn’t exist.’ According to Reker, the sports centre is a bustling, always innovative company. As he says it: ‘It was never finished.’ What do they hope to tell people with their book? Kuiper: ‘We wanted to show people how intense our experiences at the sports centre have been.’

Completely unreliable

This intensity is in no small way thanks to the students. While other cities tend to see student sports clubs merging with clubs for regular people, the ACLO is strictly for students only. According to Reker, they are the best customers in the world: ‘They really make it worth it, even if they’re just passing through.’ ‘They’re great thinkers, eager to learn, and they are very enthusiastic’, Kuipers adds. ‘Sure, they’re completely unreliable, but great when they do show up.’

These days, the complex is home to 18,000 student athletes and 140 staff. Every once in a while, however, you can find high school students. During the Athens Games, for instance. ‘The first Athens Games were entirely unique. Only after we’d done it did other cities start organising similar events’, says Reker.

Reboot of the ‘Lauwersloop’, the legendary relay race from Leeuwarden to Groningen.

Way of life

No company operates the same way for fifty years straight. The sports centre is no different. ‘In the old days, people used to work out for an hour each week, which was quite a lot back then’, Reker reminisces. ‘Top-class sports was like that as well. These days, top-class sports are a way of life.’

Society has changed quite lot as well, and this is reflected in the relationship between the students and the coaches: ‘Trainers used to call students “sir”‘, says Kuiper. After all, the students might end up in a higher position than the trainers. These days, trainers and coaches are the boss, no doubt about it. Kuiper thinks this is beneficial to the students’ athletic performance.

The coaches themselves have also changed. In the ACLO’s early days, trainers had to be as versatile as possible, but these days, the centre employs mostly experts who have been taught by leagues. Kuipers calls them ‘educational farmers’. They’re certainly an improvement when it comes to athletics, he feels. ‘But trainers and coaches used to be much closer, because there were fewer of them.’

Proud

The ever-increasing study pressure has not gone unnoticed at the sports centre. Kuiper and Reker are less than enthusiastic about students having to graduate as quickly as possible. The introduction of the binding study advise has had quite an impact, Reker thinks: ‘So many choices are taken out of the students’ hands. They used to worry about whether they’d made the first team or not. Now they have to make it to the end of the academic year before finding out which team they’re on.’

So are they nostalgic for the good old days? Was everything better back then? The coaches aren’t sure how to answer that. One thing is for sure: they are extremely proud of ‘their’ ACLO’s fiftieth anniversary. For Kuiper, the anniversary book also closes out his days at the sports centre, because he is retiring. He will soon say goodbye to the ‘fantastic and dynamic environment’ he has worked in for approximately 47 years. But the ACLO lives on, even without him. Reker: ‘The best is yet to come.’

For many years, ‘BOM’men‘ (excercising on music) was a huge hit for ACLO, but the sport centre stopped offering the lessons in 2015.

Dutch