EHF Executive Board Report, December 2021
President’s Welcome:
The President, Marijke Fleuren, welcomed everyone to the sixth Executive Board meeting of the year. At the start of the meeting, the President asked all the Executive Board members to share their hockey and any personal news of the last couple of weeks.
Apologies for the Absence: Gabriele Lemmle.
The minutes of the November meeting were approved.
Committee Appointments recommendations:
The President presented the EHF Committees’ appointment recommendations to the Executive Board. Each Committee Chair has specific criteria to make the appointments: every nominating National Association to have at least one person appointed; at least two women in each committee; a chance for new talents; history (attendance and performance); finance background; good level of English; the relationship between the number of playing members of a National Association and the number of appointed committee members. From next term on, we expect our NAS to come forward with at least 30% of each gender.
The recommended appointments were approved and can be found here.
Competition Committee Outdoor report:
Walter Kapounek updated the Board on the EHF Indoor Junior, Indoor Seniors, and Indoor Club events in December/January/February. Some of the December events were canceled. Walter explained the promotion and relegation of Indoor Junior events. EHF and Competition Committee (Indoor/Outdoor) Chairs are in close contact with January and February events hosts.
Walter mentioned that we now have all hosts for the 2022 EuroHockey Qualifiers in August. More information here.
Angus Kirkland updated the Board about the first face-to-face meeting with the organizing committee of European Championship 2023. The next meeting is planned to take place in Hamburg during the EuroHockey Indoor Championships.
EHL update:
Angus Kirkland updated the Board about the EHL situation, he presented the draws for the April events being held in Amsterdam and Egara.
The EHL Executive Board is now examining all the legal papers with regard to a potential new shareholder and will come back to the Board, NAs, and Clubs in due course.
Communication Committee Report:
Siobhán Madeley presented the Committee report to the Board. The EHF prioritized streaming in 2021 and we have streamed 250 games despite the pandemic. EHTV now has 120,000 subscribers, which is a 20% increase from 2020. Facebook: 44,895 followers. Interesting fact – 473,200 minutes have been watched on video all with a call to action back to the EHTV platform. Instagram: 22,100 followers.
Development Committee Report:
Peter Elders updated the Board about Development programs running in 2021, which includes: FIH state of the game, Mobilizing volunteers through good governance, Hockey’s impact through solidarity, EHF expert facility panel, Hockey ID, EHF Club of the Year, Twinning program, EHF Solidarity grants, the Hockey forest, and gender balance, etc. For more information about the programs click here.
Officials Committee Report:
Inez Cooper and Magdalena Nazaret presented to the Board the Officials Committee report. The year was difficult for the Committee regarding appointments with a lot of withdrawals and replacements due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The EHF had to postpone Education events all year on multiple occasions due to Covid-19. There were a couple of online workshops for UDP/U4E/U4N. 2022 Nominations for U4E and U4N Cohort just closed and we are expecting 36 umpires will participate across both programs. A Local Official’s course has been designed and recorded and now sits on the Coach Logic platform so when the EHF makes appointments, they are also given the video link (the EHF is looking at how to use gamification in the future to make this even more appealing). More information about the programs can be found here.
Coaching Committee Report:
Inez Cooper updated the Board about Coaching programs: European Hockey Podcasts, C4E, TCP, EHF National Association Coaching development, EHF Institute. Due to Covid-19 some of the programs were postponed and some have been run as online workshops. More information about the programs can be found here.
SWinG project:
Marijke Fleuren presented the SWinG project to the Board. This 3-year Erasmus+ project has just come to an end. It has been a very successful program with 9 clear Intellectual Outputs. See gamechangeher.org
Marijke’s presentation can be found here.
EHF Executive Seminar:
Peter Elders, Inez Cooper, Marcos Hofmann, and Marijke Fleuren shared their experience in EHF Equally Amazing Leadership Forum. Fifty guests attended the forum in November from the 12th – 14th in Brussels and included keynote speakers from the IOC, FIH, Copenhagen University, and National Associations. All guests pledged what their National Associations would do to become more Equally Amazing – the EHF will follow up with each individual at the start of January 2022. More information here.
FIH update:
Marijke Fleuren updated the Board about the recent FIH Executive Board meeting including Hockey5s events, the postponed Women’s Junior World Cup, and the Men’s Junior World Cup, which had been a big success.
Finance Report:
Angus Kirkland presented the year-to-date 31st November figures, December year-end figures, and Budget 2022. The budget remains ahead of the target.
Closing:
In her closing words, the President thanked the Executive Board for their time and hard work during 2021.
A special word to all our staff members. All Board Members expressed their big gratitude to all of them for their dedication to the EHF. Marijke hoped that the ‘togetherness’ helped the staff and the Board to feel supported, especially in not easy personal circumstances.
Marijke wished Merry Christmas to everyone!
