KIT Teams at DHM Field Hockey

As a pure university sports team, a women's and men's team traveled to the DHM field field hockey in Neuss and had to prove themselves against strong competition. Against strong competition they could show appealing performances.

The German University Championship in men's and women's field field hockey took us to Neuss near Düsseldorf this year on 04.07.14. Not only the long journey, but also the fact that Karlsruhe could only compete with pure university sports teams without club players due to injuries and for organizational reasons, distinguished the Karlsruhe delegation from the rest of the participating teams. Nevertheless, the boys and girls from Karlsruhe were able to prove that they can also keep up with club players who are well attuned to each other in terms of fitness and technique over 2x 20 min. Due to the short notice of the DHM, unfortunately only 4 teams were represented in both the men's and the women's competition.
In the first match the male WG Karlsruhe met the WG Aachen 1 and lost 6:1 despite a good start.
Motivated by the defeat we started into our second game with a quick lead in the first minute by Michael Maier against WG Bochum. However, after our opponent had recovered and proved why he deservedly became German university champion, the match ended with a clear 8:2 against the KIT team. In the third match, Karlsruhe then faced the second team from Aachen and energetically showed that they can keep up with the other teams after some practice time. The Karlsruhe team benefited from their strong defense and their goalkeeper Markus Vorholzer who together were able to fend off quite a few shots on goal and "short corners". Clearly exhausted the Karlsruher fell behind then nevertheless and had to admit themselves defeated in the end 4:2, with which unfortunately no placing in the medal ranks was possible any longer.

In their first match, the Karlsruhe women directly met the big favorites and were clearly defeated. The WG Cologne defeated Karlsruhe clearly with 10:0, whereby the result would have turned out still more clearly, if Iris Andrus, as actual field player, had not convinced in the Karlsruher goal with some gloss saves. Already in the second play, now against the team of the sport university Cologne, the ladies from the fan city showed themselves from their fighting side. After a hard fought first half time the WG Karlsruhe had to admit defeat however then nevertheless with 4:2. Motivated by the individual performances in the second game, the Karlsruhe ladies started their last game against WG Aachen with a 1:0 lead. Due to diminishing strength in the Karlsruhe squad, the Aacheners were then able to equalize. However, after a few dominant minutes of play, the Karlsruhe ladies, who were eager to win, managed to score the decisive goal through Tamara Spieß, who was able to convert a pass from Nadine Sessinghaus. The match against Aachen ended 2:1 for Karlsruhe.
We congratulate our ladies on their third place and the well-deserved bronze adh-medal.

All in all, the field hockey university athletes look back on an interesting and eventful competition day, which gave each of us a lot of experience and fun. The teams were able to finish the evening together with dinner and public viewing.