Scorpions Inline Hockey Club
In March 1995, with the help of Uwe and Karin Bajorat, Ferdie and Gustel van Wyk and Heike Erdmannsky-Dedig, the club “Red Scorpions” was established. A constitution was drawn up and training commenced in the German school hall. After the hockey ball did too much damage to the walls, we were requested to find a new venue. We moved into an old warehouse, belonging to Mr Chris Sandman, which was our home for three months. The number of members grew from 3 to 25 members within weeks. Fundraisers were held and the Municipality of Otjiwarongo agreed to a loan, for the building of a rink. During the building of the rink – which was built by parents mainly after hours – training took place at a hall at the horse stables.
The first tournament we attended was the tournament hosted by Wild Cats in Windhoek. To our surprise, one of our players, Joring von Gossler, was voted the most promising player. After this tournament and the publicity in the daily newspaper, our number of members grew to 34. We hosted our first tournament on our new rink and it was a huge success. Teams from Windhoek, Tsumeb and Swakopmund attended. From then on, the club grew stronger and stronger. Heike continued to coach until 1997. In 2000 she returned to coaching and had Kobie Jacobs, Theuns Visser and Wally Walters to help with the different age groups. The group of coaches continued until 2006, when we were able to secure the services of Nevzat Dogan, a coach that had worked in Turkey and Switzerland. He left after three months and Ryiaan Ely took over the coaching position for two years. 2009 saw, Pete Kamman from Bozeman, USA step in as coach. Brian Sobel, from West Chester, Philadelphia USA followed 2010 and Bryan Robbins, from Pittsburgh, followed in 2011. Ben Stock coached for a short while during 2012 and was followed up by Otwin Foerster. Zach Sawyer from New Jersey took over in 2013 untill 2015. Nick Marrone from Buffalo coached the Scorpions during 2016. In 2017, we saw Nil Domenech-Sanuy (Spain) coaching the Scorpions. Matt Wojcik (PA) helped coach us, untill the arrival of Imanol Carcamo from Spain. Currently,and for the past 3 years we are being trained by local ex National player and captain Marco Debortoli from Swakopmund.
Due to the most generous loan received by Mr Theo Bortstlap in 2015 and the help from parents and other sponsorships, we were able to install our own sports court with roof coverage. This was a dream come to for the Scorpions and we strive to keep growing in members and producing top class national players.
