During the Euro Hockey League, we were present with the X-Skills zone: an interactive place where children not only came to watch, but above all could take action themselves.
During the week, many children participated in the various challenges. With live leaderboards, there was continuous competition: between games, there was a fight for the highest scores, and players kept coming back to beat themselves and others. Every day, players with the highest scores were rewarded with a nice Ribbon Sleeve.
In addition to the challenges, we also organized the EuroHockey Freestyle competition, which focused on creativity and personal style.
In the preliminary rounds, participants played in pools of approximately 4 players and went through three rounds: Creativity round, Combo Round & Control round.
The best players per pool advanced to the semi-finals at the end of the day, whose winners qualified for the grand final and received tickets to return on the final day.
In the end, there were Mats, Gijs and Annebelle. They had the opportunity to show off their skills at halftime of the men's final, in front of a full stadium.
With Evy-Lynn (himself a finalist two years ago) and Jeroen Hertzberger as a jury member, the final got an extra load. In the end, Annebelle took the win and won a nice Custom Osaka Stick!
What was particularly noticeable during the EHL:
the X-Skills zone got players moving.
From audience to participant.
From waiting to playing.
From watching to doing it yourself.
Nice to see how much energy, fun and competition ensued, and how X-Skills became part of the overall EHL experience.