Belgotex Elite Club Challenge - A celebration of the present, an inspiration for the future

Belgotex Elite Club Challenge - A celebration of the present, an inspiration for the future

The Belgotex Elite Club Challenge has been around for a decade now with eight events taking place over that time. The tournament, heralded as the premier non-tertiary club tournament in South Africa, has largely been a celebration of the present and maybe even the past.

In recent events national players like Matt De Sousa, Matt Brown, Rusten Abrahams, Jacinta Jubb, Jess O’Connor and Kristen Paton to name a few have stamped their authority on the tournament and show cased their talents. Of course the list of players who have starred in the tournament over the years is a verifiable list of South African Hockey royalty and that in itself is an inspiring notion.

The sponsorship of the Elite Club Challenge has seen players, umpires and officials treated in away that few other tournaments can rival. There is the accommodation, the facilities, the food and the experience that are unrivalled not just in South Africa but also in most countries around the world. The tournament is player centric and focussed on maximising the experience so that thetalking points are about what happens on the astro turf.

Throw in the sensational media work whether it's the streaming, media, photography or exposure and you can safely say all boxes are ticked in the celebration of the present over a sensational weekend of hockey.

But with the tournament now getting into its second decade and the legacy of the event starting to grow, celebration has started to develop into inspiration. Following their recent successful victory at the Belgotex Elite Club Challenge, Riverside Hockey Club took the trophy to a junior hockey session to tell the kids and future stars about the tournament.

Many of the kids had watched the tournament with a number reflecting on their favourite players, the goals they most badly want to re-enact and the goalkeepers they are looking at that make them re-think their goal scoring attempts. Such was the vociferous response when asked if they would like to be part of the Belgotex Elite Club Challenge in the future that the calls were resonating far further than the Durban North club.

As Julian Hykes scores another world class goal another young kid is in the garden recreating it over and over again. As Daniella Rhodes slalomed through the defensive barrier a kid is setting up cones to work on their own snake-like abilities. As Anton van Loggerenberg pulled off another world class save, kids ran to bash a ball against a wall and see if they could stop it coming past.

Well the Belgotex Elite Club Challenge may be designed as a celebration of the present it has inadvertently become an absolute inspiration of the future. We wouldn’t have it any other way!

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