With eight ABC teams (five girls, three boys) taking part in this year's youth grade competition we would first of all like to say a massive thank you to the following people for the many hours invested in this programme; Catherine Bacon, Erin Beattie, Craig Bishop, Garry Bishop, Paige Blake, Tobin Blathwayt, John Bonneywell, Alice Cheesman, Alex Conway, Liam Corrigan-McKay, Karen Croft, Casey Crowley, Geoff Dean, The Holt Family, David Kay, Michelle Locke, Kelsey Lomas, Jhontae Meintjes, Graeme Moscrip, Lauren Naidoo, Hannah Patterson, Holly Pearson, Georgie Shotter, Alex Sim, Carey Wessels, Graham Wessels, Madi Wright, Danny Wrigley and Tony Wrigley.
The Youth Grade competition for Years 7-10 is always a great fun competition with two grades catering to different levels of experience. For many of the Year 7 players this season it was their first taste of 11-a-side hockey so having the adult players on the turf playing alongside them providing guidance was invaluable.
With a short 8-week season we wanted to make sure the players got plenty of turf time and the decision to enter eight teams ensured that was the case with a few teams playing without subs each week. Luckily the young legs were able to cope with this and it was wonderful to see the improvements each week as the players got plenty of time on the turf to learn new skills and improve their game.
We can't wait to see some of these players "graduate" from youth grade and start to move through the grades in senior club hockey. The future is definitely looking bright...
A special thank you must go to Elna Meller who despite being the NSU Club President was happy to help us out when one of our teams was short and donned the yellow of ABC for the first (and probably last) time in her life! Elna embodies what the youth competition is all about, building hockey players for the future no matter which club they are playing for!!!!
We'd also like to once again thank the Kaipatiki Local Board for their generous support!
