Extreme Football Tourism: NETHERLANDS: BVV De Kennemers

Sportpark Adrichem Oost, Beverwijk (BVV De Kennemers)

Netherlands, province: North Holland = Noord-Holland

3 II 2024 / BVV De Kennemers - RCZ 1-5 / District West I, Saturday League 5A (= NL level 10)

Timeline

1918 / Foundation of Beverwijksche Voetbalvereeniging (BVV) De Kennemers, the oldest football club in Beverwijk, with the opening meeting taking place in the small upstairs meeting room of Café Restaurant Suisse, Breestraat, on December 28th, 1918. The founding fathers present at this meeting are Dick Honig, Klaas Huisman, Adriaan de Bats, Piet Blaauw, Geert van der Wel, Henk Kluft, Gerard van Essen, Jan Huisman, and Coen Verhorst. The club’s first pitch is situated at Watervliet in the Breesaap dunes region in Velsen-Noord - a pitch which the club hires from the newly erected local steel factory, Koninklijke Nederlandsche Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken N.V. (KNHS). With no dressing rooms being available, the players change clothes in Ron Weinbrecher's farmstead, some 150 metres down the road. The first home match, attended by some 700 spectators, results in a 7-2 win against VVU.
1920 / Having played in the ranks of the so-called Noord-Hollandsche Voetbalbond (NHVB) for the first two years of its existence, BVV De Kennemers now changes allegiance, joining the Haarlemsche Voetbalbond (HVB). HVB and NHVB were both league associations under the auspices of which football below the level of NVB League 3 (later NVB League 4) was organised.
1922 / Winning promotion from the HVB ranks, BVV De Kennemers accedes to NVB District West I’s League 3 for the first time.
1926 / BVV De Kennemers signs a coach for the first time. Mr A. Segerius receives a salary of 30 guilders per month - but is honourably discharged of his function one year later due to the club no longer being able to bring up his salary.
1930 / Abandoning Terrein Watervliet in Velsen-Noord, BVV De Kennemers moves into the newly-built Gemeentelijk Sportpark at Cornelis Amsestraat (later renamed Hendrik Mandeweg) in Beverwijk proper. Initially, the club shares this municipal sports park with RKVV DEM – although DEM’s lower team football continues to take place at Landgoed Schulpen in Velsen-Noord, that club’s old ground.
1935 / Leaving BVV De Kennemers as the sole user of the Gemeentelijk Sportpark, RKVV DEM settles at the newly laid-out Terrein J.J. de Wildt (later renamed Sportpark Adrichem) at Hoflanderweg.
1936 / Having previously won the title in District West I’s Sunday League 3 in 1929, 1931, and 1935, but losing the promotion play-offs on all of those occasions, BVV De Kennemers finally accedes to Sunday League 2 following the title in Sunday League 3A in 1936.
1949 / Finishing last in Sunday League 2A, BVV De Kennemers drops back into League 3 after thirteen years.
1951 / Winning the title in District West I’s Sunday League 3C, BVV De Kennemers manages a return to the League 2 level after two seasons. In the following two decades, the club alternates spells in League 2 (1951-63, 1964-67 & 1970-74) and League 3 (1963-64, 1967-70) with titles in League 3A in 1964 and 1970.
1954 / BVV De Kennemers moves into the newly laid-out Gemeentelijk Sportpark Adrichem, occupying the part of the park to the east of the pitches occupied by RKVV DEM since 1935. Continuing to make use of the pitches at Hendrik Mandeweg for two more years, the club eventually centres all its activities at Sportpark Adrichem in 1956.
1974 / Finishing in fourth place in Sunday League 2A – and helped by the fact that a new level, Hoofdklasse, is created to top the Sunday league pyramid – BVV De Kennemers breaks down the door to Sunday League 1 for the first time in club history. The stay at that level is short-lived, though, with relegation following after just one season in 1975. Also in 1974, the club enters a regular Saturday team into the regular leagues for the first time.
1977 / BVV De Kennemers inaugurates a new set of dressing rooms.
1980 / After five seasons in Sunday League 2, BVV De Kennemers finishes in eleventh place in Sunday League 2A, resulting in relegation to League 3.
1986 / Finishing in tenth place in District West I’s Sunday League 3B, BVV De Kennemers finds itself in Sunday League 4 for the first time in club history.
1987 / Finishing twelfth and last in Sunday League 4D, BVV De Kennemers drops back into the ranks of NHVB after not having played at that lowly level since the early 1920s. It takes the club three years to return to Sunday League 4 (1990).
1993 / The club’s ten-year-old youth prodigy Rafael van der Vaart is taken over by AFC Ajax’s youth academy; Van der Vaart goes on to have a professional league career of eighteen years (2000-18), successively wearing the colours of AFC Ajax, Hamburger SV, Real Madrid CF, Tottenham Hotspur FC, Real Betis Balompie, FC Midtjylland, and Esbjerg fB, while also winning 109 caps for the Netherlands (2001-13).
1996 / Clinching the title in District West I’s Sunday League 4C, BVV De Kennemers returns to Sunday League 3 after an absence of ten seasons.
1998 / Clinching the title in District West I’s Sunday League 3A, BVV De Kennemers returns to Sunday League 2 after an absence of eighteen seasons.
1999 / Goalkeeper Dorus de Vries, who spent his youth years in the academies of BVV De Kennemers and SV Beverwijk, earns a professional league contract with Telstar, going on to have a twenty-year long professional career with Telstar, Stormvogels Telstar, ADO Den Haag, Dunfermline Athletic FC, Swansea City FC, Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Nottingham Forest FC, and Celtic FC.
2000 / A thorough renovation is carried out at BVV De Kennemers’ premises at Sportpark Adrichem.
2001 / Clinching the title in Sunday League 2A, BVV De Kennemers returns to Sunday League 1 after an absence of 26 seasons.
2004 / In the most successful season in club history, BVV De Kennemers finishes in third place in Sunday League 1A. Also in 2004, 21-year-old Sierra Leonean asylum seeker Gibril Sankoh, who had made it into BVV De Kennemers’ first team, earns a professional league contract with Stormvogels Telstar, going on to represent FC Groningen, FC Augsburg, Henan Jianye FC, Roda JC Kerkrade, and Meizhou Kejia FC before bowing out into non-league with ACV in 2018.
2006 / After five seasons, BVV De Kennemers drops back into League 2 following a tenth place in League 1A.
2008 / Winning the title in Sunday League 2A, BVV De Kennemers manages a return to Sunday League 1.
2012 / Finishing in last place in Sunday League 1A, BVV De Kennemers drops back into League 2 alongside LVV Roda ’46 (zo) and vv ZAP.
2013 / Under the guidance of coach Richard Plug (former professional league player at Telstar, FC Zwolle, and Dordrecht ’90), BVV De Kennemers finishes in fourth place in Sunday League 2A, 15 points behind champions OFC. In the subsequent round of promotion play-offs, the club eventually reaches the final, in which it defeats SV De Foresters (2-1 aggregate) to win promotion to Sunday League 1.
2015 / Dead-last in Sunday League 1A, BVV De Kennemers descends back into League along with IJVV Stormvogels and USV Elinkwijk.
2016 / After an absence of twenty years, BVV De Kennemers enters a team in the regular Saturday leagues again.
2017 / Finishing in thirteenth place in Sunday League 2A, BVV De Kennemers suffers relegation alongside vv ZAP and vv De Blokkers – as such finding itself in League 3 for the first time in nearly twenty years.
2020 / In the 2019-20 season, cut short due to the COVID lockdown in the early spring of 2020, BVV De Kennemers finds itself in second place in District West I’s Sunday League 3A, four points behind BVC Bloemendaal. As such, the club is admitted to Sunday League 2 for the new season.
2022 / In its last season with a regular Sunday team, BVV De Kennemers finishes second-last in Sunday League 2A, with just SVW ’27 picking up fewer points. In the subsequent round of relegation play-offs, the club defeats RKVV Limmen in R1 (1-1 A.E.T. and a penalty shoot-out), only to withdraw voluntarily in R2, thereby allowing FC Medemblik a bye. Meanwhile, the Saturday team fared little better, finishing last in Saturday League 4C, suffering relegation to the newly created Saturday League 5 alongside vv THB and SV Terrasvogels. After an uninterrupted presence in Sunday league football of more than a century, BVV De Kennemers continues its life as an exclusively Saturday league club.