Orca Rowing Club

Algemene Utrechtse Studenten Roeivereniging ORCA (A.U.S.R. ORCA)

Orca's logo

History

The General Utrecht Student Rowing Club ORCA, The Netherlands, located on the Merwedekanaal at Utrecht (city), was founded on 24 October 1970 out of the fusion of two older Utrecht student rowing clubs, Charon and Batavier. During a general member meeting the establishment of ORCA became a fact. The common aim of the newly founded rowing club became reaching the national and international top.

These ambitions led to results very quickly. In 1973 Orca rowers rowed a national record. Hereafter the association starts to grow more and more towards its goal: nearly every year Orca rowers conquer places in the Dutch rowing equipe for the championships or even for the Olympic games. During the Summer Olympics of 1976 in Montreal Orca rower Hette Borias rowed in the Dutch women's coxed four.

In 1980, a silver medal is won on the world championships. In 1981, the Dutch equipe consist of 16 rowers, ten of which are ORCA rowers, which resulted in another silver medal.

A very important victory in 1980 was the coxed four at The Varsity, the most important student rowing event in the Netherlands. It was a great sensation that Orca's coxed four, non-members of a student corporation rowing club, won this race on the waters of the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal. Since then Orca won this event repeatedly for a total of 5 times.

In the meantime Orca increased to a level of approximately 400 members and the accommodation, which was shared with two other rowing clubs, became overpopulated. In 1978 a new boathouse was built to house the three Utrecht rowing clubs, A.U.S.R. Orca (non-member of students' corps), U.S.R. Triton (subsidiary of a student corporation) and U.R.V. Viking (amateur rowing club). This new boat house contained one clubroom to be shared by Orca and Triton and one clubroom for Viking. Orca and Triton had to share because at the time it was assumed by the local authorities that sooner or later Orca and Triton would fuse into one rowing club. This proved to be a wrong assumption and in 1995 alterations to the boat house were carried out, creating a new clubroom. This alteration made it possible for the two student rowing clubs to go their own way (apart from the changing rooms, which are still shared by the two rowing clubs.)

Orca continued growing and counts almost 600 members around 1990. It was decided that Orca had become too large and the club reduced to its current level of approximately 550 members.

The Dutch coxless four at the third Rowing World Cup in Lucerne, 2006. They won silver, less than two seconds behind the golden British crew. Bow: Geert Cirkel (ORCA), 2: Jan-Willem Gabriels, 3: Matthijs Vellenga, Stroke: Gijs Vermeulen

International Orca rowers (1994-2007)

• Victor Bastiaansen
• Dienke Bos
• Pieter Bottema (World Champion LM8+ 2007)
• Danielle Broekhuizen
• Rutger Bruil
• Geert Cirkel (World Cup M4- 2007)
• Bastiaan Diepenbroek
• Meike van Driel
• Annemieke Eijgelaar
• Renske van der Gaag
• Frank de Graaf
• Sjoerd Hamburger (World Champion BM1x 2005)
• Roy van Kessel
• Susan van Kuijeren
• Joeri van Leeuwen
• Elien Meijer (World Champion W4- 1994)
• Jerker Menninga
• Peter van der Noort
• Merijn van Oijen (cox)
• Jan Willem van der Paauw
• Ysbrand Schreuder
• Paul Serail (cox)
• Reina Sikkema
• Dagne Swarte
• Marieke Westerhof
• Bert Westerveld

See also

• A.R.S.R. Skadi
• Nereus Rowing Club
• Proteus-eretes
• Ghent Students Rowing

External links

• A.U.S.R. Orca website
• NLroei website The Dutch website for rowing, with many pictures of national and international rowing events!!
• KNRB Royal Dutch Rowing Association
• Sjoerd Hamburger Official website of Sjoerd Hamburger
• U.S.R. Triton website
• U.R.V. Viking website
• World Rowing website The official website of the World Rowing Association (FISA)