About Dorans

Dorans is a Dutch e-sport association founded on 14 january 2015 in Nijmegen. Members of Dorans are given the opportunity to join weekly trainings and to participate in tourneys in the Huygens building. Dorans hosts trainings and tourneys in e-sports such as League of Legends, Super Smash Bros and Rocket League. Dorans is affiliated with the Radboud University Nijmegen, the NSSR, and the Nederlandse E-sportbond.

For info about the games we play and our weekly practise sessions, visit our Games page.

History

Training and membership

The first Dorans training started on 2 March 2015 on a Monday. 30 members divided into 6 teams attended this training. Tuesday and Wednesday consisted of 25 and 10 members which brought the total number of members to 65 on the first week. At the end of March, Dorans consisted of 80 members, mostly thanks to a lot of promotion material shared on the university campus. 22 April 2015 marked 117 members and on 16 February 2016, Dorans passed 200 members. After increasing contribution costs and a decrease in initial hype, the number of members returned to 100-140 in the following academic year 2016-17. The majority of members played League of Legends during this time. The following years proved that the number of members fluctuates somewhere around 90.

Trainings for Super Smash Bros were organized in the second half of the year 2016. Although the open trainings were well-visited, the closed trainings weren’t. The reasons for this were mostly related to a lack of interest in weekly trainings for Super Smash Bros Melee and Smash 4. In the same academic year, attempts were made to organize Hearthstone trainings prior to a Dutch competition. Dorans also has a select group of Rocket League players training weekly. Other e-sports such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Overwatch were allowed to organize team trainings at Dorans’ location at their own discretion.

Foundation

The concept for Dorans was first coined in 2014 from the notion that e-sport requires a platform give training and competitions a more serious edge. The Radboud University Nijmegen already was the hosting site for a yearly competition named CognAC League of Legends Tournament, which was hosted by CognAC and is now known as the LCN. During the commute by train from Nijmegen to Aalten, the Brus brothers expressed their frustrations concerning the organization of regular e-sport trainings to prepare for CognAC League of Legends Tournament. A recurring problem was the lack of commitment by the members of The Scientific Approach, something which would be penalized in other sports such as football. Because e-sport was going through a popularity boom, Rudo and Jeroen decided to create an association based on what a football association would look like, including structural agenda and yearly competitions. They phrased it as being “a football association, excluding ball, including pc”, with emphasis on the task to assign coaches to each team. Subsequently, Arnoud Tijink and Jasper Hermsen joined the organization to devise the first plans for Dorans. The combined experience they wielded from being in the board of the natural sciences student association Leonardo da Vinci formed the foundation for the first policy plans.

The Fathers of Dorans

The first notes describing the founding of Dorans date from 2 December 2014, when the first archived board meeting took place. The meeting was attended by chairman Rudo Brus, treasurer Jeroen Brus, secretary Jasper Hermsen and Arnoud Tijink. During this meeting, the board members were preparing to pitch their idea to the NSSR, who expressed their concerns for the financial complications of membership and the exact definition of e-sport. Thanks to the time and devotion of NSSR board member Chris Wennendonk, Dorans is assigned an aspiring member spot in the NSSR. On this same day, an e-mail account was created which sent its first e-mail to the NSSR. They also received their first e-mail which was sent by Jasper Hermsen titled “testje” (editor’s note: testje is the diminutive form of test). Jasper and Arnoud made the first logo drafts at the beginning of January, which ultimately formed the current logo: a square based on “Summoner’s Rift”, the map on which League of Legends is mostly played. 22 February 2015 marks the start of the first 5-man board consisting of chairman Arnoud Tijink, secretary Rudo Brus, treasurer Jeroen Brus, PR and sponsorship Fabian van Hummel, and technical commissioner Jasper Hermsen. They would remain the board until 26 June 2016.

From left to right: Jasper, Rudo, Arnoud, Jeroen and Fabian

Achievements

  • IeSF WK eSports 2016 Jakarta, Indonesië: group phase
  • University eSport Master EU 2017: first place
  • ESL Benelux Season 3: second place
  • International College Cup 2017: group phase
  • University eSport Master EU 2018: group phase
  • University eSport Master EU 2019: group phase
  • 9th place in the European Rocketeers Championship 2020
  • 3rd place in Academy League (LoL) season 1
  • 2022-2023 UniRocketeers Springsplit 5th place: Qualified for CRL Worlds 2023