A young club, a great history

The history begins in 2014, when we started a great adventure: MESAICOS, a Field Hockey / Landhockey club in Solna with a focus on students and families. What followed was a nice history with many great achievements, new friends, wonderful moments together and above all a lot of FIELD-hockey. All of this, in a country where ice-hockey and uni-hockey play a much bigger role in society. Now seven years later, let’s look back on that history!

The idea

The idea was born during the development conference of 2014, organized by the Swedish field-hockey federation SLHF. Nils and Maarten wanted to start a club using field-hockey to bring together people and make new friends. The emphasis would lie on outdoor hockey and hockey as a social activity.

The club was founded in July 2014 and the first sessions that were organized were so called “Student-Hockey” sessions. These were a simple get-togethers where enthusiastic participants played a field hockey match on half a field.

Youth Hockey

In the months following the creation of the club we organized several recruiting events, some of which during hagaparken idrottensdag. Equipped with just a couple of hockey-sticks, some hockey-balls and cones, we showed hockey to many children in the central park of Stockholm. During this day we came across Ingrid, a parent of three children who played hockey with a group of Dutch expats in Stocksund. MESAICOS contacted them and set up a cooperation to integrate this hockey group into the club: by the start of 2015, we had created the MESAICOS Youth section.

The logo

The logo of MESAICOS shows a heart, two hockeysticks and of course the name MESAICOS. MESAICOS stands for the latin saying MEns SAna In COrpore Sano, which means “a healthy mind in a healthy body”.

Playing at MESAICOS is not just about playing hockey: it is about feeling good, being in a great physical shape and, overall, having a healthy life style. The heart symbolizes both “feeling well” as well as having a healthy body. The logo was designed with the help of Logohuis.

The timeline – History of the club

2014 – 2015: The first hockey seasons and tournaments


Shortly after the club was founded, MESAICOS participated in the first tournament in Åkersberga. The club contributed to the tournament with a team that consisted of some of it’s own members and hockey players borrowed from a German club from Darmstadt, where one of our founding members had his hockey roots. The first ever official match was won by 2-0: a sign for a great future?
In November 2014 MESAICOS proved that hockey in Sweden can be played almost all year long. While all other Swedish field-hockey clubs started with their indoor competition already in September, MESAICOS kept on playing outdoors until the 25th of November that year!
The following year, MESAICOS participated for the first time ever in the Swedish outdoor championships. The newly formed team performed well and ended up on a respectable 4th place. The team was supported by some players we could recruit through our close collaboration to the hockey friends from Darmstadt.
The results for the competitions can be found at the following link.

2016: The first important milestones

The club achieved another important milestone in January 2016 by buying two new hockey goals. MESAICOS could now organize matches and tournaments at their home base in Bergshamra. This resulted in the first tournament weekend, when we invited Nacka and Roslagen to come and play against our teams. This was a great success although the weather wasn’t very good.

As the club developed, its structure was formalized in writing by introducing a committee and a board structure. Some of these committees were the material committee and the recruitment committee. By the summer of 2016 the club was mainly focused on formalizing these structures. This led to a “MESAICOS” script in which the club structure is clearly presented as well as a code of conduct. Among other things, the code of conduct invites everybody to play no matter their gender, sexual identity, orientation or expression, ethnicity, religion, disability or age.

2016 was also the year MESAICOS traveled for the first time to matches abroad. We played the Swedish Championships on a pitch in Denmark, where both the Ladies and the Men’s team returned to Sweden with a Silver medal from the Swedish Championships.

2017: Up to 100 members!

In 2017, MESAICOS aimed to grow to 100 members. To do this, the club restructured its’ youth division, the part of the club that was least developed. The new Youth-committee under the lead of Ariadne changed training times and recruited new youth players. Moreover, the growth of the Youth section made field-hockey in Stockholm bigger and more professional. New clubs like HULK in Uppsala and the new official local district competition attracted many new hockey players everywhere in the Stockholm district. In addition, MESAICOS developed strongly on the side of veterans. By setting up a new veterans team, the club recruited both new players and leaders that could support the organisation. Finally, the club also continued it’s professional partnerships with Stag Hockey. By the end of 2017 MESAICOS had grew out to 117 members!


2018: The first championship win
!

In 2018, the women’s MESAICOS team won the Swedish national championship! The ladies team (D1) defeated Nacka and Valhalla on the 15th and the 16th of September 2018. This season therefore gave a great boost for the future developments of the club and active participation of members of MESAICOS in the board of the national Swedish Field-Hockey Association (SLHF).

2019: 5 year anniversary

By 2019, the club had developed into a very stable hockey club, one of the largest ones in Sweden. Over the years some members left because they moved abroad, but many international players joined and a core of members permanently staying in Sweden was formed. The 5th anniversary of MESAICOS was then celebrated with a hockey tournament: we reached out to all of our former members and friends we made over the year and invited them to the MESAICOS 5 year anniversary tournament.
With teams from Finland, Czechia and Sweden, we celebrated the club with 2 days of hockey, barbecue and party. A great success and a lot of fun for everyone involved.


2020: The pandemic

2020 was a difficult year in many terms. As well as the world around us, MESAICOS was heavily influenced by the global pandemic.
The ladies team planned to play in the EHF – Eurohockey tournament in Croatia, for which they qualified with their win in the Swedish championships 2018. This event was unfortunately canceled, as well as many other activities such as hockey trainings and social gatherings.
New players joining and members leaving MESAICOS is a integral part of MESAICOS hockey culture. In the year 2020 it was time for a very big good bye for one of the founding Members, Maarten Steinz.
That goodbye was celebrated with one of the last partys we could have, before the COVID regulations reached Sweden.

2022: National Champions

During the outdoor season of 2021/2022, the MESAICOS mens team won first prize in the national championships. This means that they are qualified to join the European Club Challenge in May 2023. During the same time, the ladies also qualified to partake in the European Challenge too!