Orca Rowing Club
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Algemene Utrechtse Studenten Roeivereniging ORCA (A.U.S.R. ORCA)
The General Utrecht Student Rowing Club ORCA, The Netherlands, located on the Merwedekanaal at Utrecht (city). was founded in 1970 on the 24th of October out of the fusion of two very old Utrecht student rowing clubs, Charon and Batavier. During a general member meeting the establishment of ORCA became a fact. The common aim of the newly founded rowing club became reaching the national and international top.
These high ambitions and a great deal of training by the rowers lead to good results. Already in 1973, Orca-rowers rowed a national record and Orca got its first golden medal in Moscow. Hereafter the association starts to grow more and more towards its goal: nearly every year Orca-rowers conquer places in the national Dutch rowing equipe for the championship and sometimes even for the Olympic games. The first silver medals in 1974, and 1978 are conquered and at the Olympic Games of 1976 in Montreal Orca-rower Hette Borias rowed in the Dutch national women's coxed four.
After ten years the Dutch national equipe starts to count more and more Orca-members, and sometimes a nearly complete Orca team reaches international status. In 1980, a silver medal is won on the world championships and in 1981, the national Dutch equipe consist of 16 rowers, ten of which are ORCA-rowers (!), which resulted in another silver medal. In the years that follow Orca-rowers continue winning medals and at this point in history Orca becomes the leading Rowing club of The Netherlands. Another very important victory in 1980 was from the coxed-four at the Varsity, the most important student society games. It was a great sensation that Orca's coxed four, rowers of the largest non-member of students'corps rowing club, won this game on the waters of the Amsterdam Rijn Canal at the 100th anniversary of Triton (a students'corps rowing club, which are the organizers of The Varsity as well as our neighbouring rowing club!).
In the meantime Orca increased to a level of approximately 400 members, as a result of which the accommodation, which was shared with two other large rowing clubs, became overpopulated. In 1978 a new boathouse was build to house the three Utrecht rowing clubs, A.U.S.R. Orca (non-member of students'corps), U.S.R. Triton (member of students'corps) and U.R.V. Viking (amateur rowing club). This new boat house contained one clubroom to be shared by Orca and Triton and one clubroom for Viking. Orca and Triton had to share because at the time it was assumed by the local authorities that sooner or later Orca and Triton would fuse into one rowing club. This proved to be a wrong assumption and in 1995 alterations to the boat house were carried out, creating a new clubroom. This alteration made it possible for the two student rowing clubs to go its own way (apart from the changing rooms, which are still shared by the two rowing club).
Orca continued growing however and counts around 1990 almost 600 members. There was decided that Orca had become too large and the association reduced to its current level of approximately 550 members.
International Orca rowers (1994-2006):
- Victor Bastiaansen
- Danielle Broekhuizen
- Rutger Bruil
- Geert Cirkel
- Bastiaan Diepenbroek
- Meike van Driel
- Annemieke Eijgelaar
- Renske van der Gaag
- Frank de Graaf
- Sjoerd Hamburger
- Roy van Kessel
- Susan van Kuijeren
- Joeri van Leeuwen
- Elien Meijer
- Peter van der Noort
- Merijn van Oijen (cox)
- Jan Willem van der Paauw
- Ysbrand Schreuder
- Paul Serail (cox)
- Reina Sikkema
- Dagne Swarte
- Marieke Westerhof
- Bert Westerveld
[edit] External links
- A.U.S.R. Orca website
- NLroei website The Dutch website for rowing, with many pictures of national and international rowing events!!
- KNRB Royal Dutch Rowing Association
- Sjoerd Hamburger Official website of Sjoerd Hamburger
- U.S.R. Triton website
- U.R.V. Viking website
- world rowing website The official world rowing website
