The Flanders Cup, a biannual International Powerchair Hockey Tournament, is set to take place from May 27 to May 28 in Roeselare, Belgium. The sixth annual event will be hosted by the GIDOS Screamers, a team from West Flanders, Belgium made up of players from Belgium and the Netherlands. The Screamers play in the Belgian Super League where they have won the title 12 times, including a record 11 titles in a row.

The Flanders Cup was founded by the late Bryan Vantornhout, who played for the GIDOS Screamers and Belgian National Team, in 2014.

Hedwige Van Steen, one of Vantornhout’s former teammates, currently organizes the event with a team of six people.

“Currently I am a co-organizer of the Flanders Cup. Our organizing crew consists of Bryan’s mother, two people who knew him very well and two people who work for our sports club,” said Van Steen. “My personal connection with Bryan is that he was my teammate and mentor. Bryan passed in 2020. A week before his passing, he had allowed me to come to his home. Not to say goodbye but to discuss the Flanders Cup.”

“That visit and my prior knowledge really helped me to put the pieces together for the fifth edition in 2021,” Van Steen continued. “I did almost all the organizing alone that edition. It was very stressful, but worth it.”

After the 2021 edition of the tournament, Van Steen helped form a new group of six organizers, for which she serves as coordinator, organizing communications and logistics for the event.

Founded in the 1970s, Powerchair Hockey, also known as PowerHockey, is a relatively unknown sport. It is played by players with various disabilities who use electric wheelchairs. While the sport is nearly identical in Europe and North America, there are slight differences in the rules. Similar to ice hockey, teams are allowed five players on the floor at a time, including the goalie. In North America, Powerchair Hockey teams consist of 12 players, while in Europe teams consist of just ten. In North America the playing area is 15.25 meters (50 feet) by 30.5 meters (100 feet). The European floor size is 16 meters (52.5 feet) by 26 meters (85.3 feet). The goal also varies in size, with the North American version of the sport using smaller nets.

Powerchair hockey was originally popular in Germany and the Netherlands, where the first tournaments were held in the 1980s. Powerchair Hockey began to receive international attention in the 1990s, with the first World Games being held in Utrecht, Netherlands in 1998 featuring ten nations.

In August 2001 an international tournament was held for the first time outside Europe in Minneapolis with 11 teams from six countries taking part. This tournament was followed by the International Committee for Electric Wheelchair Hockey (ICEWH) being founded in 2002. The ICEWH was the first executive committee in the sport's history.

Following the merger of the ICEWH with the International Wheelchair & Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS) in 2005, the ICEWH was changed to International Powerchair Hockey (IPCH) in 2015.

Despite the growth of Powerchair Hockey over the last 50 years, the IPCH is still fighting for official recognition. Today, the sport has official committees in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and USA. Several other countries currently compete in the sport without official committees including Austria, Estonia, India, Japan, Morocco, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

This year’s tournament can be watched on The Flanders Cup YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/@hevast.