Last weekend the Great Dutch Universities Championship (GNSK) was organized for the 54th time. The venue for this year’s event was the city of light, Eindhoven. The GNSK 2012 was organized by students in collaboration with the Student Sports Centre Eindhoven and under the auspices of Student Sports Association the Netherlands (SSN). The team from Eindhoven won the final ranking of the GNSK, which made them the first winner of the Pieter Tilstra Cup, a challenge cup named after Pieter Tilstra, who has meant a great deal to student sports in The Netherlands. Eindhoven finished with a total of 3256 points, followed by Nijmegen (2904 points) and Groningen (2871 points).

The event started on Friday-evening with a great laser show where all the participating cities were represented. The Saturday and Sunday were competition-days. During this weekend 1500 students participated at thirteen different sports and winners will have the great opportunity to participate in the European University Championships 2013. The sports in which students could participate this year were: badminton, basketball, cycling, fencing, handball, judo, rugby, squash, table tennis, tennis, football, volleyball and water polo. 

Pieter Tilstra has played an important role for the national and international students sports as a former board member of the Dutch Students Sports Association and Executive Committee member of the FISU. The Dutch Students Sports Association is enormously grateful for his involvement. In honour of Pieter it was therefore decided to attach his name to the overall winning-cup of the Great National Universities Championship. It is a challenge cup which will be awarded from now on at the annual organized Great Dutch Universities Championship. For this first occasion the Pieter Tilstra Cup was handed out by Pieter´s wife (Ulla) and his son (Mark): "As his son, I was honoured to hand out the first Pieter Tilstra Cup in memory of my father, it meant a lot to me and my family – the development of Student Sports, both in The Netherlands and abroad was my father’s passion. I sincerely hope the Pieter Tilstra Cup will act as a symbol of inspiration for young athletes to reach for the top and become a catalyst for ongoing development of student sports in The Netherlands."

A delegation of the Organizing Committee of the 2nd European Universities Games - EUGames2014 visited the GNSK as well. Jarijn Nijkamp, the EUGames2014's marketing manager presented the Games' plans and progress to the assembled VIPs in the VIP program. Jack Jacobs, Sports Manager, and Hester de Vries, liaison officer, also visited the GNSK and helped out in various ways. Besides useful benchmarking, the tournament proved to be fruitful ground for attracting new volunteers for the Rotterdam EUGames2014.

[Photos: Bart van Overbeeke Fotografie (1-2) & Dutch Students Sports Association - SSN (3-4)]