Camping with USSV Softijs

I just joined the speed-skating team here at the university — USSV (Utrechtse Studenten Schaats Vereniging) Softijs. Nevermind that I just learned to stop hugging the wall.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of camping with the beautiful people of USSV Softijs in the small seaside town of Monster. The beaches here are different from those in San Diego. The sand is a lot whiter, and you won’t see people hopping around in flip-flops and shorts. But of course, there are always exceptions.

There’s a tradition in the speed-skating team to take a dip in the North Sea with only your underwear on at midnight. And as a new member,  I was obliged to do the same. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived in California for all my life, but I don’t think I was ever as cold as I was when I came out of the water. Frozen balls make better memories though, so long as there is the certainty of warmth some time soon after, and so long as there are other people who (willingly) put themselves in such a situation.

There’s no actual ice skating involved in the introductory camp — it was more of a getting-to-know-one-another and lots of bier kind of camp. I was the only non-Dutch person there, which was both cool and intimidating at the same time. When you’re speaking one-on-one with people, everything is fine. It’s the group conversations that can feel a bit isolating, since group conversations are usually in Dutch. At least when you’re speaking with only one other person you can ask for clarification or translation without breaking the rhythm.

At camp, we played some traditional Dutch games. There’s one that has you stuff whole tomatoes in your mouth to gather “raw materials” to build imaginary cities against other teams. There’s another game that lines up two teams across from each other, and one person in the middle. Depending on who won or lost the last round, you’ll either be trying to kiss the person in the center, or doing anything you can to prevent that from happening. Usually this means a lot of wrestling on the floor.

During the last night, a rival team from the city of Delft, Els (Effe Lekker Schaatsen), came by for a surprise visit.

Note: “lekker” means tasty or delicious in its usual context.

They put team colors (green) on everything they could, placing stickers on the urinals and on people’s backs. We pretend to hate each other, but it’s hard to do that when you dive in the North Sea together in only your underwear.

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Practice is every Wednesday at 10 PM. At a time like that, you can’t help but wonder what they’ve got planned afterwards.

Author: Wes

Writer, runner, student. View all posts by Wes