Shefford & Sandy Hockey Club

Training from Tuesday 10th September 2019. 6.00-7.20pm

Junior Hockey Academy is the name for our older juniors group and operates for our 11/12-14 year old members on Tuesdays from 6.00-7.20pm. This group is on the left hand side of the pitch.

The purpose of the Academy is to encourage our young players to continue improving their skills.With training aimed at developing ball skills, positional play and tactics these sessions will enable our youth/young players to make the transition from junior to senior hockey within our club.

All Juniors who are playing in a senior league team are also invited to attend senior club training on Tuesdays from 7.30-8.30pm

Teams
Once a junior is 13 years old they can be selected to play in a senior team. Some young people find this a little too challenging and would rather continue playing in the Junior hockey matches and tournaments until they are more confident.

Junior matches
We play lots of friendly matches throughout our season. Generally these are on Sunday mornings and occur every 2 weeks.

Tournaments
Our juniors all have the opportunity to play in local club tournaments which operate monthly during the season.These are on Sundays and some are already in the EVENTS section.

County selection
S&SHC will recommend juniors to attend selection days for Bedfordshire County Hockey teams. In 2014/15 we had more than13 of our juniors playing for Bedfordshire County Teams and 3 went on to Regional Hockey training centres.

Safety when playing hockey:
SHIN PADS are an ESSENTIAL piece of protection and players will be refused training and matches if they are not wearing them. Football ones are OK but once players are in adult teams proper hockey shin pads should be worn.

GUM SHIELDS: We ask that ALL of our older players ( JHA - left hand side of the pitch) have a gum shield with them at training. The coach will pause before match play to allow gum shields to be fetched and worn. They are not essential for training BUT WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT ALL YOUNG PLAYERS WEAR THEM during match play -whether training or actual matches.

Our mini hockey ( right hand side of the pitch) should also have gum shields for matches.

We appreciate that gum shields can be very uncomfortable and often fit poorly. However a gum shield that is falling out is little use if a stick or ball does impact the face. Gum shields need to fit the teeth snugly and still allow the child to speak and breath (!). Shop bought ones that are heated up at home to mould to the teeth can work well or a more expensive ( but very good) alternative is OPRO Hi impact £39.45 www.opro.com. Sometimes dentists do good prices too.

GLOVES: Not essential but a sensible bit of protective kit as young people progress to adult teams.

Suppliers for hockey kit online include:
www.hockeyproshop.co.uk ( This supplier holds our kit)
www.barringtonsports.com
www.nolimitz.co.uk

Term dates: Our junior training generally takes a break at half terms and over the Christmas holidays. When the 'season' ends at Easter we usually continue our training a little longer depending on demand.

Coaches: Your regular coaching team is made up of - Jade Gravell (Junior coordinator) Doug Dawson, Steve Ashdown, Chris Fell, Hannah Fell, Wendy Shepherd, Hannah Bartram, Dom Wright and Pete Read. Plus we will have visiting and junior helpers on a weekly basis.

Dropping off and collecting your children: Please can I ask that all children are brought into the pitch area by an adult and then handed over to a coach. Also all children need to be collected from the pitch itself as we will not allow children to leave alone - the car park is dangerous at 8pm as our adult members are arriving. If you would like your child to leave alone then please contact me to discuss this.

Cost: £70 for the 2019/20 season. Please pay by the end of September - cheques made payable to Shefford and Sandy Hockey Club.

Content of training sessions:[/b] At Shefford and Sandy Hockey club we recognise that young players are the future of our club and we hope to engage them all in fun and effective training. We use the England Hockey recommended training programmes of Quicksticks and In2hockey - http://www.playquicksticks.co.uk/?cat_id=35&level=1 and http://in2hockey.englandhockey.co.uk/ .

Website : If you have not joined our website yet then please do so - there are lots of interesting news items on there and your child will have their fixtures posted here.

Please print off and read our 'A Young person's Guide to our club' from our Documents section of this website.

If you have any questions or queries please contact Jade Gravell jade.gravell@yahoo.co.uk.

Further documentation about our policies are available under CLUBS FIRST documents.