AH&BC Amsterdam’s Noor de Baat shone in Oman to win the player of the tournament prize as the Netherlands won the first women’s FIH Hockey5s World Cup in Muscat on Saturday.
It meant they continue to have clean sweep of trophies with Olympic gold, world senior and junior titles, Euro gold, Indoor World Cup gold and the FIH Hockey Pro League title.
De Baat did, however, miss out on playing in their devastating 7-2 final victory over India due to a knee injury sustained in the semis.
Despite her absence, they surged into a 2-0 lead in just four minutes and went into the break 6-0 up.
Bente van der Veldt scored two of the Netherlands’ seven goals in the final to take her personal tally to 15, the second highest of the tournament.
Janneke van de Venne took a moment to reflect on the Dutch success: “We feel great as a team, we worked hard for this and we’re very proud that we did it today.
“It was such a tough journey but proud that we are here now. It’s really nice to play against all these countries, you play against countries you never play, so it’s really great to do this and to participate at the World [Cup].”
In the bronze medal match, Poland impressed with their good structure to claim a 4-2 win against South Africa, who seemed to have run out of ideas and energy. Amelia Katerla scored all four goals for Poland and was ecstatic with their third-place finish at the tournament:
“Great, that was our goal so we did it, we won it, so we are very happy. It is a huge success because we are more focused on hockey 5s and indoor at this moment, and it’s a small group which is participating in hockey anyway.”
Ukraine were too good in their comfortable 6-0 win over New Zealand for 7th place, Karyna Leonova picking up another four goals to end the tournament with 10.
