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Become a Helmink Hero!

Become a Helmink Hero!

Barendrecht, Dordrecht, Papendrecht and Zwijndrecht; those are all kinds of cities in the province Zuid-Holland. Today we are going to talk about a basketball organization in Zwijndrecht called Helmink Heroes. Chairman John Burggraaf will give us a preview about Helmink Heroes.

Social and fanatical organization

Carel Sünderann became the first chairman of Helmink Heroes in 1973, which was called Devel Devils back then. Almost 20 years later, the Devel Devils change their name into BC Verkerk. BC Verkerk used to play in the highest League of the Netherlands (Dutch Basketball League) around the 90s, but for quite short time. Helmink Heroes is a big organization right now, but what is Helmink Heroes about? “We are an organization with 165 members, an amount that keeps growing. We have 10 teams with young and senior members. Helmink Heroes is a social, but especially a fanatical organization,” Burggraaf explains. “We want to offer basketball to everyone we love this sport. Being young, old, tall or short doesn’t matter to us. Everyone is 100% welcome! All of our members makes Helmink Heroes possible, as well for our volunteers, the parents and our township.”

Sponsors who have helped Helmink Heroes a lot

Financial help, that is something you see everywhere in the last 10 years. “That’s right,” Burggraaf says. “We had that kind of problem a couple of times. In the past 5 years, we are a steady organization again. Still, it will always be difficult to find that many volunteers and trainers. We are very glad that we’ve found our main sponsor Micha Helmink, because those kinds of impulses helped our organization very much! Not only Micha Helmink of course, along with Google Adwords we’ve managed to keep our organization stable.”

From BC Verkerk to Helmink Heroes

Helmink Heroes is very proud of the way the highest men and women teams are playing in the Tweede Divisie and that their amount of members has doubled up in the last 4 years. Using Google Adwords, preparing clinics and organizing tournaments has helped the organization a lot. “We want to grow further, that means gather more volunteers who wants to build on a better future for Helmink Heroes.”

As said before, Zwijndrecht had a lot of names for its basketball organization. BC Verkerk played in the Dutch Basketball League before in the 90s. “We certainly want to try and play in the Dutch Basketball League again, but that’s more a strategic goal of our organization. For now, I think it’s better to progress within the Eerste Divisie, and be stronger every season. I think basketball in Zwijndrecht has a lot of potential. The ‘Drecht’ cities, along with Zwijndrecht, are places where a lot of talented basketball players come from.”

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