The European Volleyball tournament for Statisticians - EVS - was originated, in 1990, in Voorburg, Netherlands, by some statisticians who were enthusiastic about volleyball.
The idea was simple. “All statisticians from all over Europe meet for a comparative volleyball competition”.
Besides fun in the game and comparisons of the profession and working world one essential element of this tournament should be an understanding and tolerance for the different cultures.
The organizers of the first tournament established the headquarters (HQ) of the EVS community in Voorburg (since 2003 in Heerlen). The unceasing effort and engagement of the headquarters led to a steady growing EVS community in the course of the years. We’d like to mention here that economically weaker countries could be partly supported to enable them to take part in the tournaments. The headquarters remains the central point of the EVS community. It is the point of contact for questions concerning the organization and provides help for the performance of EVS tournaments.
At first eleven representatives of different countries took part in the tournament. In the meantime the number of the participating countries increased to 16 countries and the number of participants increased to 300 persons. During the early years single tournaments were played in the categories Men’s, Women’s and Mixed teams. By now the mixed system with at least two female participants of each team has been accepted. Since 2003 the European Championship has to be played within two groups (A and B) while the participants of the A-Category have been fixed to ten teams.
As this event has become very popular the rule that only statisticians can take part in this tournament was relaxed within the last years. Meanwhile other participants from different part of the public administration are always welcome.
