Summer Twilight Hockey is back on Sunday evening at 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm, entering its third round last week.
Starting Sunday, 8th February and running for 8 weeks, this social comp is all about community, connection, and a good run-around. It’s family-friendly, has mixed teams of all skills for the 7-a-side format.
Brendan Sheppard, an organiser, said it was a good start to the season.
“We had a washout in the first round due to the weather, but we are on to round three,” he said.
“Since it started, it has been good. We’ve got a good turnout of players, returning players and new players. We’ve also got a range of young juniors that are coming up and through, which is really positive for us, especially in a sport where you’re trying to grow, not just survive these days, which is really positive.
“It’s a really fun social competition, which allows people to come and have a bit of a run around with either family members or friends. They play like it’s slightly competitive, but at the same time, it is a social event, so it’s fun. It’s a good community outing every Sunday afternoon, and it’s enjoyable.
“It’s really wonderful. People are there for just the love of the game and a bit of fun; it’s a bit of activity on the weekend and a social connection with other people, which is good.
“Currently, we have five teams, be looking at about 50 people at the moment.
“We have people that travel from Cootamundra and Cowra come and play with us, so it’s not just Young.
“We obviously have people from other towns that come that are passionate about hockey and are enjoying it, which is really good to see. It is nice to see that we can actually pull people from other towns to come over and play with us, so they obviously enjoy themselves and see the benefits of it.
“We’ve got new people, and we’ve got the same people, which is positive because you want to retain your players and bring new players in. We have people who go away after school, so juniors will go away after school and we lose them or some people take on other roles within the community and other sporting organisations and stuff. They come, and they go.
“Last year and this year, we’ve had positive growth, which is good. Through our junior program, our Hook into Hockey program, which we run in terms two and three, is building and introducing kids to hockey. Then we try to get them when they get to the age where they’re able to come and join us in these twilight competitions that we have twice a year, and then the goal from there is to try and get them to be able to play in our winter competition, which is our premier competition through the year.
“It has grown in the last few years; we’ve had growth within our sport, which is really positive. That’s not just by luck; it’s obviously a lot of hard work has been put in by the committee, trying to entice people to come and play the game.
“Being round three, it makes it a bit difficult if we have an influx of people that want to play, and that all comes in by, say, round four, they’re halfway through this competition. It’s only an eight-week competition. It does make it difficult. However, we do encourage them, and we are never going to say no to people, because obviously, it’s about growth, it’s about getting people into the game and having them enjoy the game as much as we do.
“What we suggest is if people are interested or they’re not sure, but they want to come and see what it’s like, just to come down on a Sunday when we’re playing and meet some of the committee members or they can message us on Facebook and we can organise for them to come down and meet and have a chat and watch the games and see how how it all looks. They can get a bit of a feel for it, and then after that, we can accommodate them in the competition if we can.
“Then from there, we can see how we can support them in registering for any of the other competitions that we have throughout the year.
“We are going to be running our Hook into Hockey program again, starting next term.
“We ran a clinic for those kids last year. We had three Olympians, Australian hockey players, coming out and running a clinic with us. It was amazing. It was really good. It was a massive event for the kids, and we had a good turnout.
“She had about 40 to 50 kids turn up for that of different ages and different skill levels, and that was really good. We run that program, and it’s an introductory program for kids from the ages of five to 12, and then it’s basically the kids that come back after they’ve been introduced. We build their skills, and we get them into a higher level and into games and things like that.
“We haven’t quite built up a junior competition yet. That would be the goal, but the Hook into Hockey program is fairly successful, and it continues to run well.
“That will be kicking off in May, but the registrations are open. We open them early because we are going to start advertising that in a little while, just to get these families, parents and kids on board, so we can have the numbers a little bit earlier than we normally do. It’s a bit of a rush at the end with parents coming in after the holidays, getting them registered and stuff. We’re going to try doing it a bit earlier this year and see what we can do there.”
– Jack Murray
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