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About Dorans

Dorans is a Dutch esport association founded on January 14, 2015, in Nijmegen. Members of Dorans are given the opportunity to join weekly training sessions and to participate in tournaments in the Huygens Building. Dorans hosts trainings and tournaments in esports such as League of Legends, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, VALORANT, and Rocket League. Dorans is affiliated with the Radboud University Nijmegen, the NSSR, and the NBSE.

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

History

Training and Membership

The first Dorans training session started on the 2nd of March 2015, on a Monday. 30 members, divided into 6 teams, attended this training. Tuesday and Wednesday consisted of 25 and 10 members respectively, which brought the total number of members to 65 in 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. The 22nd of April 2015 marked 117 members, and on the 16th of 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 2016-2017. The majority of members played League of Legends during this time. The following years proved that the member count fluctuates somewhere around 90.

Trainings for Super Smash Bros were organized in the second half of 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 had a select group of Rocket League players training weekly. Other esports, 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 of Dorans was first coined in 2014 from the notion that esport was still relatively unestablished and needed training sessiona and competitions to give it a more serious edge. Radboud University Nijmegen was the hosting site for a yearly competition named CognAC League of Legends Tournament, which was hosted by CognAC and became the tournament known as LCN. During the commute by train from Nijmegen to Aalten, the Brus brothers expressed their frustrations concerning the organization of regular esport trainings to prepare for the 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 esport was going through a popularity boom, Rudo and Jeroen decided to create an association based on what a football association would look like, including a structural agenda and yearly competitions. They phrased it as being “a football association, excluding ball, including pc”, with emphasis on assigning 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 plan.

The Fathers of Dorans

The first notes describing the founding of Dorans date from the 2nd of December 2014, when the first archived board meeting took place. The meeting was attended by chair 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 esports. Thanks to the time and devotion of NSSR board member Chris Wennendonk, Dorans was assigned an aspiring member spot in the NSSR. On this same day, an email account was created which sent its first email to the NSSR. They also received their first email, 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 League of Legends’ “Summoner’s Rift”. The 22nd of February 2015 marked the start of the first 5-person board consisting of Chair Arnoud Tijink, Secretary Rudo Brus, Treasurer Jeroen Brus, Commissioner PR and Sponsoring Fabian van Hummel, and Technical Commissioner Jasper Hermsen. They would remain the board until the 26th of June 2016.

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

Achievements from Dorans teams

  • 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