Korfball, a Game Men and Women Play as Equals

Sanne van der Werff, 24, serves as a kind of point guard for PKC and the Dutch national team while attending medical school, throwing left-handed passes on the perimeter, shooting reliably and dropping into the post for elaborate screens and handoffs beneath the basket . The hierarchical nature of hospital instruction leaves her feeling less trained than fully certified doctors, she said. But in korfball, which she has played since age 7, she said: “I feel equal to the boys. I can say what I want. I can do what I want. I see a boy just as another girl on our team. A two-meter-tall girl.”

By halftime, Fortuna trailed, 12-4. The team seemed surprisingly lethargic on its home court. One of his top men was absent with an injury. All of its goals had been scored by women, including two by Celeste Split, 32, the career scoring leader among female players in the Dutch league with more than 900 goals.

“There is a saying that with good women, you can win championships,” Split said.

And without enough elite female players?

“I don’t think you can win,” said her teammate, Fleur Hoek, 26, also a star on the Dutch national team.

PKC, billed as the world’s largest korfball club with roughly 1,000 members, has embraced this strategy with blunt resolution.

When its coequal head coaches — Wim Scholtmeijer, 40, and Jennifer Tromp, 44 — took charge for the 2020-21 season, they began to dismantle the club’s male-dominated culture, telling men on the team, “You have to listen to the girls.”

At practices, the coaches repeatedly played a Beyoncé song with the lyrics, “Who run the world? Girls.”