Buxton Hockey Club keen to see junior section grow

The College Road club currently boast a full junior set-up to go alongside their four men’s senior and three ladies’ senior sides.

But the club is now keen to build on that success story and work hard to bring the next generation through.

Chairperson Jim Stewart said: “The junior side of it is something we want to push more in the coming months.

“We have junior training sessions in the week and we want to set up training sessions for people looking to get into hockey in the new year.

“People like to belong to something and we are a friendly welcoming club.

“We’re not playing at the top level in the country and we play across a broad spectrum of standards so there is something for everyone.

“We want the juniors to enjoy playing. The challenge is to encourage people to play hockey instead of football.

“If you can get a group of mates at junior eleven coming through then often they will stay through their junior year and go into the adult teams.”

As part of the drive to boost interest, Stewart says they will also be looking to take hockey into schools.

“The aim is to get into schools and put the word about to encourage people to play,” he said.

“We have people on the committee who already work in schools doing generic sports coaching, so we are in a good position to be able to offer our services as an alternative option to the mainstream sports.

“We don’t have any real set targets, we are just looking to have more junior numbers than we do at present.

“We have scope to expand our junior section and we have senior players willing to give coaching and put good quality sessions on.

“It is good when you return up to the junior training sessions and you see numbers increasing week in week.”

Hockey is currently on a high following a surge in interest after Great Britain ladies took Olympic gold in the Rio 2016.

“We are thriving at the moment and are key to the community,” said Stewart. “ Hockey is doing well.

“There was a big boost after the 2016 Olympic gold medal win, it acted as a real catalyst.

“Since then numbers have really gone up and the national league structure and regional leagues are healthy with big clubs and lots of teams.

“We are a small club in comparison to some and it feels like the sport is doing well.”

The club has largely remained unaffected this year despite COVID restrictions, with the vast majority of matches and training sessions still taking place before Lockdown 2.

“Until the last month we have not been so heavily affected as we were still able to play,” added Stewart.

“We had systems in place from Government and Hockey England to create covid secure ways of running training and play up to the second lockdown. We have managed and we are looking forward to getting back to playing.”

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