With separations for “private reasons” that’s sometimes a thing. Especially when coaches leave a club after a successful season, press departments like to use this term to save themselves the effort of explaining possibly more complex reasons. But sometimes private reasons are actually private reasons – and hit everyone involved equally unexpectedly.
Under the leadership of their coach Jan Henseler, the women’s hockey team at the Munich Sports Club have developed from a relegation candidate to a serious quarter-finalist within a year. Last weekend, the Munich team even defeated the big favorites Mannheimer HC in the quarter-finals for the championship at their facility in a decisive game for the final round. “That made everyone very, very proud,” said Henseler.
“Sometimes things in the private sphere change in such a way that the distance to the family is no longer feasible”
In view of the quality, but above all the financial gap in the league from north-west to south-east, it was actually a respectable success. In the second half of the season, the MSC had already presented itself as competitive against top teams. He got seven of his 16 points from the last five of 16 games. The fact that Henseler left the MSC after just one season despite this obviously positive development hit those responsible hard. But: His request for the end of the contract “unfortunately had to be accepted,” said hockey board member Olaf Mackensen.
Henseler also emphasized “that it wasn’t planned”. He started with the aim of initiating and accompanying a process in Munich, “I certainly didn’t mean just a year, and it’s all the more difficult for me to say goodbye”. But hockey is – especially on the island of Bavaria – nothing that would justify a complete reorientation of a life plan on its own. Even full-time coaches don’t get rich with their work in this sport, the players in the top leagues only formally trade as professionals anyway. “Sometimes things in the private sphere change in such a way that the distance to the family is no longer feasible,” said Henseler, who came to Munich from Bonn before the season.
Had a lot more plans in Munich than a year ago: coach Jan Henseler.
(Photo: Oliver Zimmermann/foto2press/IMago)
Distances should also play an important role in the upcoming search for a successor for the Bundesliga women and the youth sector. In North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg, where the German hockey strongholds with the highest club and performance density are to be found, people leave halfway through the away games in the morning and are back home at 6 p.m. “That’s not possible in Munich. There’s at least one overnight stay in between, that quickly becomes 48 hours, on double weekends it’s more,” explained Henseler. With the exception of the Alps, Munich is “simply far away from almost everything, especially from the nearest hockey club”.
For years, the MSC has been trying to compensate for this disadvantage with other attractive location factors: cityscape, good contacts to local companies, club life, help in acquiring university places. But the fact that the performance density in the youth sector in Bavaria is significantly lower, which in turn results in a smaller number of first division teams in a sport with almost no profit, is a structural problem that cannot be solved in the short term – and certainly not as a single location. Symptoms such as fewer players can be cushioned by good work and networking with other clubs in the city and in the surrounding area. Consequences such as fewer coaches, on the other hand, are a fact that the MSC has to live with for the time being.
After all, men and women have increased the sporting attractiveness of the MSC through promotion to the top division or staying up in the league. After the relegation of the Nuremberg HTC in Feld and Halle, the Munich team is now the last remaining Bavarian first division team in field hockey. Despite all the rivalry, the latter is bad news: it will make Munich an even lonelier island for the time being.
