Hidde van der Ploeg

Hidde van der Ploeg (29 December 1933 — 3 May 2022) was a Dutch volleyball player, basketball player, volleyball coach, sports editor and reporter.
Career.
Volleyball player.
Van der Ploeg played in the late 1950s and 1960s with the club REVA in Amsterdam (that later became AMVJ). He played together with international players Gertie Goedhals, Hans Maas and Paul van Lith.
Van der Ploeg played 39 matches for the Dutch national volleyball team including at the 1958 Men's European Volleyball Championship. In 1960 he came into conflict with the volleyball board and was put on non-active status.
Basketball player.
In 1962 he started playing basketball with club Landlust. He played two seasons for Landlust (1962-1964) and afterwards two seasons for U.S. (1964-1966). He played a total of 13 matches during this four seasons in the Dutch Basketball League A. He also played one match for the Netherlands men's national basketball team.
Volleyball coach.
Van der Ploeg became coach of AMVJ in 1968, and the team became in April 1969 for the fifth time national champion. Van der Ploeg saw international ambitions with the club. He wanted to increase among others the numbers of training sessions as some players only trained twice per week. After he came in a conflict with players his contract was not renewed in 1969. He improved his training methods while also working as a sports teacher at the university and as a volleyball trainer at the CIOS in Overveen. He became convinced that the Netherlands could become internationally successful with a stricter training regime and a different attitude.
In 1969 he was asked by the Nederlandse Volleyball Bond (NeVoBo) to become the head coach of the Netherlands men's national volleyball team where he applied his vision and training regime. The successes were mixed, but according to Van der Ploeg disappointing. After the 1970 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship he wrote an article for De Tijd about the Championships. In this article he criticized the team. This was not accepted by the volleyball association and Van der Ploeg was fired in November 1970. After a long search, the Polish Ben Krysik became his successor. He was offered a contract as coach at HVS in Haarlem that he accepted and later Van der Ploeg returned as coach for AMVJ.
He returned again for a very short while as coach for AMJV, but couldn’t combine it with his job at NRC Handelsblad.
Journalism.
For VARA he renewed the radio program 'Van Start tot Finish' (translated: From start to finish) with ironic contributions of duo Henk Spaan and Harry Vermeegen. 
From 1979 to the 1988 Summer Olympics, Van der Ploeg was the sports editor of national newspaper NRC Handelsblad. During these years Tim Krabbé, Freek de Jonge and Herman Kuiphof had their columns on the sports pages and made also space for a weekly column written by women. In December 1984 when Arie Selinger, the coach of the Olympic women’s silver medal winning team, gave a press conference in Amsterdam, Van der Ploeg was the only journalist who showed up. After being sports editor he continued working as reporter for NRC Handelsblad.