Following up on our last post about the 2022 challenge cup, it has been great to get feedback from the players who all had a great time and have taken a lot away from the experience.
Martha played in the u17 Girls and has provided us this report:
The 2022 Challenge Cup took place over 3 days at the Nottingham Hockey Centre which was an amazing place with 6 water based astro hockey pitches. Each team was given a set of Adidas playing shirts in a certain colour and each player a specific number. Fylde had black shirts and I was number 16.
Our first stop before any hockey was a professional photo shoot with our team.
There were 4 pools for the U17 girls each with 4 teams and first of all we played a round robin tournament. Unfortunately our first game was against the overall tournament winners and it was tough. They were a really good team and didn’t give us any space or time when we got the ball. We finished bottom in our pool but we definitely improved as a team over our three matches and received really positive feedback from our coaches which kept us constantly motivated, learning and improving.
We then went into a pool with the bottom teams from each of the other pools. The opposition was still challenging as every team wanted the opportunity to improve themselves. We had mixed results but in the last game we gave it everything and held the top team in the pool to a 1-1 draw which was a brilliant way to finish.
The whole event from start to finish was such a fun experience. I’ve made some great friends, played in some really fast paced high scoring hockey matches and learned so much from all the coaches and also from other players. I would absolutely love to get the opportunity to go again next year.
Thank you to Dougherty Quinn for the sponsorship.