I hope you and your families are all well.  We’ve been cautiously getting hockey back up and running in recent weeks, starting with senior training, and over the next few weekends our first matches.

I’m pleased to say that we are now looking at Academy sessions, with the aim of starting from Saturday September 26th, in our normal 10-11.30am slot.  Apologies for the length of this email, but please take the time to read it carefully!

With hockey being classed as a so-called ‘Covid-secure’ activity, England Hockey have set out clear guidelines and procedures which we need to follow in order to deliver sessions in the current circumstances.  Most of these are common-sense precautions around social distancing and hygiene measures, but they are also running a contact-tracing service, which means that anyone taking part needs to be registered with England Hockey, so that any infections that do occur are recorded, and others participating in their sessions can be notified.

Our new club secretary, Anna Latham, has taken on the role of Covid Officer in order to ensure compliance, and we complete risk assessments for all of the sessions we run.

Due to the additional constraints and extra workload, our plan is to open Saturday Academy sessions to all Junior players – i.e. anyone under 16 who is not participating in Senior hockey.  (In general, we encourage players who are 13 and over to get involved in Senior hockey, but recognise that some players are not yet confident enough for this.)  For the foreseeable future we will not be running additional Junior sessions on Wednesday evenings, but will try to cater for as many over 13s as possible within our Senior sessions.

To get started, we need to establish how many juniors will be attending, and start the process of registration.  So, if you are interested in your children attending Academy, please complete the following two steps:

1.  Register each child with England Hockey using the link below – if your child is already involved in county hockey, you can also register them for this activity at the same time:

2.  Email to confirm that you have registered your child(ren) and to let us know you would like them to participate in Academy sessions.

academy@whitchurchhockeyclub.com

If there is sufficient interest and no changes in the current England Hockey and government guidelines, we will be in touch to confirm the start of Academy sessions and provide details of the specific procedures we will be following.

Finally, Crewe Vagrants are still hoping to run their Sunday junior tournaments this season, and we have been invited to take part on the dates below.  However, we will definitely need some additional support in order to organise and run teams at these events, so please let me know if you would be happy to volunteer to help with any of the age groups.

4th Oct 2020
1st Nov 2020
17th Jan 2021
7th Feb 2021U12

11th Oct 2020

15th Nov 2020

24th Jan 2021

21st Feb 2021

U14
18th Oct 2020
22nd Nov 2020
31st Jan 2021
28th Feb 2021

I hope that’s all clear, but if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email or call me to discuss, and especially if you are not sure whether your child should be attending Academy or Senior sessions, and for more information on what we’re doing on Wednesday evenings.

The full England Hockey guidance is available here, if you are interested.

I look forward to hearing from you, and getting hockey back underway for all our junior players!