BELVEDERE--The National Team SXM will host the first ever six a side St. Maarten Invitational Hockey Tournament at the Cruyff Court April 2 to 4. A total of seven teams have registered including two from Curacao, two from Aruba, one from Saba and two from St. Maarten.

Action is set to start Friday morning and continue to Sunday afternoon. "The level of play should be very high," said Willem Dekker. "Both Curacao and Aruba are expected to field members of their national teams."

Dekker confided although hockey has been played on St. Maarten for a long time, the actual club founded in 1996 only consists of 20 members. The group consists of several seasoned veterans and come and go players that are interns on job study programs form The Netherlands.

There is no hockey association or federation on St. Maarten so they just call themselves the National Team.

Despite not having the proper sports structure to be a legitimate National Team, the club has travelled, competed and made a good showing for St. Maarten. The team took third place in the Kingdom Field Hockey Tournament in 2007. In March of 2009 the team travelled to Curacao to play three friendlies. St. Maarten went 1-1-1.

The up coming tournament is being sponsored by Heineken, Heavenly Water and Champs Sports.

"We play at Belvedere all the time, but some people look at us funny and say here come the crazy guys with the sticks," said Dekker. "We wanted to get the community more involved."

The St. Maarten Hockey Club has arranged for the food to be provided by the Belvedere Community. "This is going to be fun. There are plenty shaded seats. It's a holiday weekend and we invite the public to come out and watch."