Before I tell you about our programme leading up to Christmas, I take the opportunity to mention those players who, since the end of last season, have progressed to join a league team. Our congratulations go to all of them, as some have only been playing for just over a year, which shows that our ‘Pathway to the Leagues’ is working. It also indicates that B2H is a great way for players to trial the club before committing to league attendance requirements, as can be seen by Simon who jumped 10 league teams in one go to find his correct level in the M3s. We also have a number of both Men and Women who ‘guest play’ in league teams.
- Sirens: Victoria Barlow, Joanna Pritchard, Emma Hawksley
- M3s: Simon Choteau
- Cobras: Tom Filipinski (GK)
- Magnets: Jez Lamb
- Vintage: Simon McGregor-Wood, Will Shinn (GK)
To see what we have in store over the next two months, read on...
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We hope to have had a few members to attend the club’s Halloween Party last Saturday and we had internally advertised for members to take part.
Our own ‘Emma’s Halloween Hat Party’ will have been yesterday on Monday 4th November after our Monday training session and we hoped to have seen lots of attendees to wear the 32 Halloween headbands that Emma had bought for the group photo. Of course, ‘Will’s Workout’ fires up again before each Saturday Game Play session to get us warmed up for the game that follows. Monday training sessions carry on as normal where our average attendance so far is 37 players which is 48% of the membership. Six members currently have a 100% attendance record. Our membership fee payments are right up to date so thank you to everyone for your attention to this.
The next exciting event on Saturday 16th November is 7s tournament #2 of 7, where our three teams of Griffins, Dragons and Sirins go head-to-head with a visiting club, at the B2H level, and it is likely to be Old Cranleighans at the moment. This T2 provides a great competitive opportunity and is well subscribed by our members showing just how much they look forward to these tournaments. We have our T3 on Saturday 14th December.
This season we are providing four ‘Winter 11s Series’ training sessions on P1 (in place of the M1s as they are doing indoor training at this time of year), hopefully managed by one of the club’s professional coaches, followed by up to six 11s games both internally and against external clubs throughout the season. These 11s events are part of our ‘Pathway to the Leagues’ and are primarily intended to teach our New-to-Hockey members the art of full sized pitch play, as B2H is mostly a 7s development group using P3.
Our first Winter 11s Series match against the visiting club of Tulse Hill & Dulwich HC is on Saturday 23rd November (P1 at 9:30am) against their M8s side, which they use for their development players. Not yet being aware of their skill level, we will be putting out our strongest side which does include a number of very competent new members supported by some of our strongest from last season.
December 16th is when our Christmas Hat Party takes place in the bar after our Monday training session where we again hope that our members will support in numbers to wear the hats Emma will supply for another group photo.
During this Autumn term we will have had a full and busy programme of events, both on and off the pitch with 45 enquires so far this season, catering for all our new NTH and ADV players alike, so if you would like to come along and see what we have in store for the rest of the season, contact Roger Hitch at backtohockey@surbitonhc.com.
Next week’s article is ‘Advertising – How we do it and how it is it successful’.