Winchester Hockey Club Oracle Edition 39
Welcome to the 2022-2023 Season!
The Winchester Hockey Club ‘Oracle’ extends a big welcome to players, parents, umpires and supporters for the new hockey season! You can expect an edition of this newsletter most weeks with match reports, club achievements, useful information and forthcoming events to look out for.
Junior Club Day Festival
11 September 2022
This year our popular Junior Club Day was held on Sunday 11th September at Kings. As always it’s a great way to start the season for our juniors and their families. This year’s even was bigger and better than ever with 202 juniors signed up!
The weather was gorgeous and the juniors, parents, grandparents and non-playing siblings all had fun playing or watching the hockey and making the most of the inflatables. The food and coffee vans were a big hit… and so were the bar and cake stall!
Continuing the club’s effort to support the new Winchester Cancer Hospice, the second hand kit stall also ran throughout the day generating funds and building on the fundraising done at the ParkRun and Senior Club Day events.
Thanks to all the coaches and volunteers for continuing to make this a highlight of the WHC calendar.
Junior Section Sponsor
We are delighted to welcome Happy Hot Tubs as our new sponsor of the junior section. Their generous sponsorship will enable the junior section to continue its investment in quality coaching, equipment and other initiatives over the course of the next few years. At the Junior Club Day, our U12, U14 and U16 teams were delighted to receive their new match shirts as part of this sponsorship.
Representative Honours Summer 2022
South Saxons / UK Lions
During the summer a number of our players represented regional teams in national tournaments.
In June, Tom Nolan, Bertie Lander and Riley Sacco played for the South Saxons in the UK U13 Regional Boys tournament. Amazingly the South Saxons, who entered two teams, finished first and third in the tournament, beating teams from the other regions of the UK. The tournament is also a selection event for the UK Lions, a representative team that runs as an U14 team. Both Tom and Riley were selected for the UK Lions squad and will represent them in various matches and tournaments during the current season.
Challenge Cup
In July, the 16 Performance Centres from around England came together to compete for the Challenge Cup. This was the conclusion of the Performance Centre cycle, in which several of our players represented the Southampton Centre. Joe Jenkinson, Harry Cooke, Max Wedderburn, Caspar Hall, Henry Crompton and Mario Gianni all played for the U17 boys team that finished second in their tournament. Max finished as top goal scorer for the tournament with an incredible eight goals in six games. Amelie Nolan and Mel Georgiou played for the U17 girls team, finishing 13th. In the U15 tournament, Charlie Long, Eddie Bulstrode, Seb Eaton and Will Leyland played for the boys team, finishing fourth.
Many congratulations to all of the players for their selection to these teams and strong performances at the various tournaments.
Fixture Programme
The junior league programme for U14 and above kicks off on 25th September, and for U12 on 9th October. There are also many friendly fixtures being arranged for all of our teams. Our aim is to provide as much competitive hockey for all of our players, with matches arranged to suit all abilities. In order to support such a fixture programme we need the commitment of all players to make themselves available for matches, regularly attend training and communicate availability promptly to team managers (through Teamo). We ask for your co-operation in this.