The humble beginning
The E.S.H. Da Vinci association was founded by a group of archery enthousiasts from the TU/e and Fontys. As they could not bear the fact that Eindhoven did not yet have a student archery club, the started a club themselves. The building of the archery range was started in 2004 by Frank, Jaron, Zef and Thijs. In August, the range (then situated in the basement of the W-Hal building at the TU/e) was almost finished. August also marked point at which the first arrows were shot. In September of 2004 the club grew with some new (starting) members.
At this point, the first board was still working on the "statuten" and house rules. During Feburary of 2005, the association was officially incorporated, also gaining its first official members. Half a year later, the range was officially opened, and Da Vinci started actively marketing the archery sport to students in Eindhoven.
The move to ADM
After being notified of the demolation plans for W-Hal in 2007, the search for a new location began. Finally, after proposals ranging from extending the small range in the basement of Traverse, next to the bike storage, to building an entirely new building on campus, Da Vinci ended up at Aan de Meet, sharing a location with O.G.I.O. as a temporary measure. Over the years, this became our home, and that's also where we train right now.
Training, competition, and changing image
After 2008, Da Vinci has participated in the rayon competitions, several other external competitions, as well as making the step to organize the first NSK (Dutch Student Competition) in 2018, which was already planned for at the very start of our association. We'll strive to make sure that the NSK remains a yearly occurance, and together with the refreshing of our public image in January 2019, we hope to continue promoting the sport to students in Eindhoven, as well as continue to provide the Da Vinci community as we have done for years.