Inspire a Generation

"Inspire a Generation"

With 100 days to go this was the games motto unveiled earlier this week. It does resonate, particularly as I think of the Hockey Nation programme, and the work already underway there to do just that. 5 days, 66 visits, 5000 kids visited by GB players through February and March kicked us off in terms of Inspiring a Generation, with many more exciting inspirational events to come.

I frequently visit clubs around the country and today I was fortunate enough to visit Thirsk HC in North Yorkshire for their pitch opening. I arrived in typical April weather, a mixture of sunshine and showers to see hundreds of people milling around the pavilion and resurfaced pitch at the school and sixth form college.

I always enjoy seeing so many young people playing, and today I saw the full range, from those who are just learning to walk knocking a ball around, to those representing at JRPC. As usual, these sorts of sights have a certain way of making you feel all is well in the world for those few moments.

What I wasn't expecting was to be so in awe of a simple conversation had between two men, who I hope wont mind me saying are slightly older than I.

Chris Darling, recently retired from the Board of England Hockey joined me today to open the pitch and hand out awards. As we were readying ourselves for the awards ceremony, we were introduced to the clubs President, Colin Gell. There was a moment and Chris and Colin shook hands and looked at each other slightly unsure of who was going to speak next.

Chris said "Colin?"

Colin said "You're never Chris Darling?" "What happened to your hair? Well at least you still have some I suppose" as he motioned towards his own head.

As the conversation grew, it transpired that they had met many years ago playing at Warrington HC, where I believe Chris is still a trustee. After the awards they sat down and recollected their days together and caught up on the days since then. Colin only stopped playing 16 years ago, aged 65.

Colin mentioned that he was delighted to see so many people had turned up and how may young people there were. He explained that in "his day" there were not the opportunities there are today for people to pick up a stick and enjoy a fun day at the pitch. This lead to the inevitable conversation of grass pitches and the quality of them, followed by the next inevitable question "you wont remember, you'll be too young". No no, sadly I'm not.

I do remember all too well the muddy hockey fields both at school and for some league matches in my early playing days. I remember watching the more experienced around me pick a ball that was in effect a bouncing bomb with startling precision, and move it on before you could say v drag. Far from it creating for me memories of cold, muddy pitches as some people will recount, I remember going back to the changing rooms surrounded by people who loved playing the game, and loved showing us youngsters how it was done, peeling off the muddy socks and being proud of the bruises I'd gathered whilst trying to stop the bounding bombs.
Those people all inspired me, so much so I seem to have followed my love of the sport into a full time career.

Chris and Colin continued to talk, and enjoyed the buffet which rivalled any cricket teas I've ever seen. There were some young leaders and coaches there today, who gave speeches about the teams they look after and you could see how enthused the U10 and U12 girls in particular were by the 17 year olds who had been working with them for the last season or more. I wondered how much those girls know about the positive role models they are and I also wonder how many of the children they work with will follow in their shoes in years to come.

Today was one of those days where you feel real community spirit, I'm sure only a glimpse of things to come as the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics arrive, but it struck me today for the first time that the days we are currently living in, and those to come over the next 97 days or so, will create for many of us the memories we will talk about as Chris and Colin did today. We talk in hockey alot about The Hockey Family and it was lovely to see today a part of that family reunited and others being introduced for the first time. I was inspired today by seeing Colin still wandering around the pitch at 80 years old, inspired by Chris volunteering to umpire this afternoon, inspired by the young leaders giving their time and by all of the club members who worked hard to make today, and every day happen for Thirsk HC. I was also inspired to try and make some of the amazing Cup Cakes one of the parents made.

When I heard the motto Inspire a Generation I immediately thought of the GB athletes across all sports being responsible for that inspiration, but the games and the jubilee give us so much more than that. It gives us an unparallelled opportunity to come closer together as communities and as a nation to inspire each other in a variety of ways, those younger than us, those older than us. I wonder how many people we have all inspired in any way today, I wonder if Colin would know he inspired me to write this.

Enjoy the next few months, for those of us in hockey it will most certainly be memorable.

The Changing Face of Hockey Clubs

According to the latest research, 7 out of 10 clubs in England find the support offered to them by EHB useful. 1 in 4 however are not aware of the support on offer. You have to feel that is a statistic which has changed over the last decade. Although there is still work to do to raise awareness, a significant majority of clubs are enjoying the support they can access.

Clubs cite the areas they need the most support in as accesing funds and recruiting new members.

Junior club membership has risen by over 50%, and adults 20% since 2005 alone, clubs are doing an excellent job of taking the opportunites available to them to raise participation within their communities.

Accessing funds, especially in this economic climate is extremely difficult, yet we have clubs enjoying wonderful successes. Old Sillhillians were just yesterday awarded Sportivate funding to run new programmes. A handful of clubs last week found out that they have been sucessful in accessing Inspired funding for new facilities. A decade ago money was plentiful and the sporting facilities landscape looked good, but fast forward and the cash is sparce. Hockey is become ever more resourceful and strategic, but most importantly it is surviving because of the huge amount of skilled and dedicated volunteers working to access funds and recruit new members.

The Grow Your Own programme was written to support clubs, to help them to be whatever it was they wanted to be, with a focus on volunteers, funding, recruitment and community events. The programme secured £90k from Harvester, and is currently being Sportsmatched for another £90k. All investment which will go directly back into clubs to support them and their communities.

GYO clubs have grown by 13% in the last 12 months alone, and with significant investment to come it will be interesting to see how those clubs continue to flourish. 

We need only look at Alderley Edge, EHB Club of the Year for a live example of how to "grow your own".

The main thing clubs identified as a problem was lack of coaches. Part of the GYO funding will look to offer coaching bursaries (not the first offered in recent years) for those communities and clubs who have ambitions to grow and desperately need new coaches. The lack of coaches was followed by the lack of volunteers. The biggest volunteer recruitment programme hockey has seen is about to begin, so watch this space! In the meantime, many clubs are using GYO Volunteers to help. Having young people in representative roles on committees is a great step forward for our sport, and helps to create a living legacy. Using local volunteer centres to get some help with back office tasks, leaving hockey people to do hockey jobs is also working well in some areas.

The last thing clubs would like more support in is accessing facilities. It is a huge problem for hockey, and something Im working on at the moment. 9 in 10 clubs hire facilities and have little control over them. The Right Pitches in the Right Places is a facilities guidance document for hockey, which has buy in from not only Sport England but the other sports which use Artificial Grass Pitches. We are already seeing success stories from pilots, and it's launch in February will be the result of 3 years work to secure the facilities future of hockey.

Opportunities

When clubs were asked what they thought the biggest opportunities were in the next two years, the message was loud and clear:

1) Linking with local schools

2)Utilising the opportunity of 2012 and the Olympics

The first point is something a colleague and I have spent quite some time on since 2009. Last week, we reported that we had not only hit last seasons young people club target, but this seasons also.

18 months ago we reviewed processes, made formulating a club school link much easier, and followed the link up with a revenue tail to ensure all clubs working on CSL had equipment to allow them to deliver. Each club now has on average 10 club school links, compared to 1 in 2005. Clubs have worked incredibly hard within their local communities and it is pleasing to see them reap the rewards.

The second point, around the Olympics links in well to the Hockey Nation blog of a few weeks ago. Clubs are excited, and planning is well underway across the nation for a summer of fun for hockey.

The biggest change I have seen over the past few years is how clubs communicate, with their members, other clubs and with the governing body.

Social media has been fully embraced by hockey clubs and their volunteers. We have 300 clubs on twitter, and slightly more than that with their own Facebook page. We have recently been priviledged enough to be given membership to many clubs facebook groups, to help with any problems, to advise where we can. It has been brilliant to see so much club activity through that, to see clubs embracing the way their members wish to be communicated with.

Twitter has revolutionised communications across the world, and hockey clubs made sure they weren't left behind.  300 of them tweet the day away, create friendly banter between themselves and support hockey in England. None more so that @richmondhcskip @lincolnroseshc and @RotherhamHC who all do an excellent job of utilising this fairly new tool.

I love being able to connect with the clubs and indviduals on twitter through my own account, and through @englandhockey being able to help someone in 140 characters I still find brilliant, the same as getting the latest scores from an event or a game on my phone on the go.

Reading HC as quite a few clubs do now, send out electronic newsletters, branded and templated and are able to see who opened the email, or perhaps who didnt, which stories generate the most interest and are able to track the success of the news they generate.

The changes in the way clubs are communicating has been such a huge change over the last few years and it is great to see hockey clubs leading the way, and generating their own hashtags #hockeyfamily #hockeynation #gogb to get behind the sport and each other.

It seems only fitting to close this with a story from a club who's story I came accross on Twitter today, and wouldnt have known about otherwise. Some extreme pre season fittness from @ipswichhc ladies 1st team, who today ran 817 miles for @helpforheros 

A big well done girls, and good luck with tomorrows DOMS!

Hockey clubs in England do a fantastic job promoting our sport and if we can continue to give them the tools and support they need it will be an exciting future for hockey.