LAGERBOX sponsors women’s football team
Our reports on sponsoring football teams here at LAGERBOX have become something of a series. There have been several announcements of new clubs supported by LAGERBOX in recent months and on a regular basis.
The LAGERBOX team has a great passion for football and sports in general, one that predates the home-ground European championship this summer that has captivated audiences at home and abroad. In addition to sports-related projects, LAGERBOX has also been supporting other social projects for some time now. In the past months, however, jersey sponsorship has become especially popular. LAGERBOX has been supplying jerseys and other training gear to several youth and men’s teams, bearing the self-storage company’s insignia. Another team is now joining this illustrious group, but this one is slightly different.
For the first time, LAGERBOX will be sponsoring a women’s team – something that has been an internal goal at LAGERBOX now for a long time. As usual, the club’s home base is located not far from our own headquarters in Cologne Ossendorf, which is also home to a LAGERBOX storage facility.
Bags and jerseys for the D juniors
We’re heading to Düsseldorf to meet SV Oberbilk. Their local D juniors are full of great football talent just waiting to be discovered. LAGERBOX has recognised this remarkable potential and is now providing the team with free-of-charge jerseys and bags.
How SV Oberbilk was founded
Despite the club being relatively new, the club's history should not be judged as harshly as that of other young clubs in Germany like RB Leipzig.
Quite the contrary: The story behind the club is a very romantic one. It simply started as a group of friends that wanted to play football together.
A group of sports enthusiasts consisting of Reiner Ziprath, Andre Sokoliß, Karl-Josef Dick, Marlies Dick, Ralph Heinrichs, Ulrich Steffen, Klaus Thissen, Stepfan Feres und Oliver Zervas came together to start a new club for football and table tennis. This became SV Oberbilk 09.
Something else happened before that. They were originally planning on fusing two existing clubs: DJK Eintracht 05 and DSC Viktoria. DSC Viktoria 02 was disbanded and DJK Eintracht 05 merged with the newly founded SV Oberbilk 09, creating a whole new club.
How did that come about? All the members at the yearly general assembly of DJK Eintracht 05 voted unanimously in favour of the merger. However, a new name was needed. Why? Because the members wanted the club DJK Eintracht 05, which has a history of over 100 years, to bear a clear reference to Oberbilk, a district of Düsseldorf. The city of Düsseldorf supported the idea and provided the club with a playing field for their youth teams on the premises of DSC Viktoria 02.
Construction began in June 2010. Fourteen years later, the club has youth teams spanning the entire range from youngsters to A juniors, three senior teams, a veteran team, and three female teams. LAGERBOX is supporting one of those three girls teams, namely, the D juniors of 2011–2012. They train twice a week on the youth pitch under the auspices of the coaches Anna Droste, Anna Schuth and Frank Severen.
Innovative training
According to the club's website, the development of the children is the main focus of these training sessions. In this club, children can make mistakes and are encouraged to take risks and to learn from them. Dribbling, for example, is expressly encouraged.
To emphasise this, their website features a quote from Werner Coerver: “Every child can learn to play football well. We all learned how to spell, didn’t we? However, it won’t work if we constantly take children by the hand and tell them what to do. Let them take the initiative themselves.”
LAGERBOX found this training approach particularly inspiring and sponsorship felt almost like a logical consequence. Moreover, the project fits perfectly into LAGERBOX’s values compass, which features sporting activities as much as sustainability or support for those with limited access to resources.
LAGERBOX is looking forward to a fruitful collaboration and an excellent upcoming season.
