On August 15th 2024, the opening ceremony of the European Youth Touch Championships launched the three day long touch tournament that lasted up until the 19th of August.
The EYTC is a famous and – contrary to his name – quite a worldwide youth championship, as this year, two guest nations joined the festivities. Those two teams being the Cayman Islands, and Lebanon, who both enjoyed the tournament and performed well.
The tournament is open to many different categories including; the mixed under 15’s, the girl’s 18, the boy’s 18, the mixed 18’s, the women’s 20, and lastly the men’s 20.
The first day of the tournament was a round robin, where each team per age category played each other, and for some categories with more teams, the round robin went on to the second day. The competition ended on the third day, with the finals and medal ceremony.
HRC sent three young ladies to the tournament each representing different categories, two in the French team, Alice in under 18 girls, and Lina in under 20 girls. The third, and youngest one, Naëlle played in the mixed under 15 for Belgium. All three of them loved the experience of meeting and playing against all those different teams and nations at such a high and intense level. This European championship allows youngsters in touch to taste high level touch, and motivates them to train hard to evolve in the sport.
Girls U18 France finished second, in front of Wales and behind England (who won every category but the mixed under 18’s – won by Wales). The same can be said for the French U20 girls, who also finished second behind England. For the mixed U15 from Belgium, they finished at 6th place, losing 5th place to Lebanon in a very tight and compelling match to watch.
Overall, the girls made the Fluffy Dragons proud and are very motivated to keep training to get better, and hopefully be able to go back to this same tournament next year! Only better of course 😉
Does touch rugby sound like something that interests you? Join HRC Touch Rugby right now (touch@haagscherugbyclub.nl)
