The sole purpose and aim for the junior committee is to ensure that the club provides the pathway for children to progress into hockey in a safe, caring, structured and fun way. It will provide the children with access to high quality coaching, that is driven by an agreed syllabus and opportunities to play games against children from other clubs. It will support children as they progress through the England Hockey system.
On Monday night we put the committee together, the first position voted on was the chair and Mr Mark Sadler was nominated by John Sisman and seconded by Clare Willgoose. Mark will be the representative of the junior section on the club’s main committee. Mark plays for our men’s second team, he also can be seen coaching on a Saturday morning. He is also the father of Louie who is a talented junior member who plays in our men’s teams as well as our U18 boys team.

I made the mistake of taking notes at the meeting and was nominated as secretary by Julie Badden and seconded by Gill Simpson.I am a parent of a 13 year old girl who plays in both junior and senior hockey teams. Paul Hamnett is junior lead coach, many of you will have seen him at training on Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights. He will be having meetings with all the other coaches regularly to ensure that our children receive the best quality coaching the club can and feedback any comments passed onto us from parents.Paul’s wife is our ladies first team goal keeper and they have a little girl who I’m sure will be coming up through the junior section of the club in the not too distant future.

The next position we elected was Fixture co-ordinator and this filled by John Sisman, nominated by Caroline Taylor and seconded by Andy Thorne. John will be responsible for contacting other clubs and organising more fixtures for all the age groups within in the juniors, ensuring we have no clashes with other competitions and County commitments our juniors already have. I know that John will do a fantastic job with this and it will be lovely to have more mini tournaments at our superb facility without having to travel miles for return fixtures.John is often coaching on a Saturday morning and his children take part in this.

Peter Rushmere is the clubs welfare officer so it makes perfect sense for him to continue overseeing the junior section of the club. He is responsible for making sure all those who have contact with our children have the appropriate paperwork regarding safeguarding our children. Again many of you will have met Peter on a Saturday morning, that’s if he’s not off running a marathon or has a hockey match himself.

The other members of the committee are parent representatives, three people put themselves forward for these positions.

• Julie Badden
• Caroline Taylor
• Andy Thorne

Between them they have six juniors, playing at all levels through the club.

The aim of the committee over the next few months is to look at what’s working well and what we can improve on. Obviously this will be ongoing but we are proposing to iron out a few things now and then have the structure and more fixtures in place for the beginning of next season. We understand we all have busy lives juggling work, family etc so it’s important that we give each of you plenty of notice so dates are put in diaries.

So while saying that please keep Saturday 16th July free in the afternoon as it will be end of season social for all juniors from 5 – 18 years with some fun games, barbecue and presentation of awards.
Do we require more help- yes please !

We need people to come forward to be Age Group Managers and Parent Volunteers.

Age Group Managers will collate the registration at the start of the year and ensure the folder for each age group is up to date. They will be part of a team that registers the children at the start of each session for that age group and collect any monies. They will also support coaches at matches and tournaments. You do not need any hockey training to undertake this role.

The idea is you would stay with your child’s age group so move up when they do. The age groups are U6,U8,U10,U12 and then separate girls and boys for the age groups 14,16 and 18.

We would be looking to have people in place in September and if you are wondering how it works, it’s how old your child is on the 1st September. So if they are 12 years but 13 on the 2nd they would be playing in the U12’s.

More information on this will come out following our next meeting.

If you have any queries or questions for the junior committee, please email me, [email protected].I will treat your email in a confidential manner. If we don’t know, we can’t help resolve. We have a fantastic junior section that my daughter has loved being part of for the past five years so let’s continue to build on what we have.