27th August 2003

Club Day looking good 

Sunday 7th September will be a busy day at Ipswich Sports Club. It will an Open Day for the hockey and Squash sections as well as being the Tennis Clubs Annual Finals Day. 

The hockey starts at 11.00 am with a Junior Coaching session open to ALL. This will be followed at 12.30 by the general Open day.  A whole host of activities are planned, ranging from the usual hockey match's to throwing the Gum boot.

The day is free of charge to Members and Non0members alike, the only thing you will need to pay for is your food and drinks during the day.

A BBQ will take place after the events at about 3-4pm depending how the timing goes.

This is an ideal day to meet up with fellow team-mates after the summer break or for interested new members to come along and she what is on offer.

Look forward to seeing you there!

13th August 2003

King and Ellis ready for England's European Challenge 

Congratulations to Leisa King and Jo Ellis for their inclusion in the England squad for the upcoming European nations Cup in Barcelona.

For Ellis it is vindication of her talent and should go some way in soothing the disappointment of missing out on a World Cup place and for King it is another huge step in the journey towards her Olympic dream.

In an ironic twist an England Victory in Barcelona will secure a GB spot in the Olympics next year.

For more information please go to the official website.

Good luck girls!

11th August 2003

Summer Training dates

11th August 2003

England Hockey Announce proposal for Amended League structure 

To read the draft in full please visit Hockey Online 

The basic idea is to increase the Premier League to 12 Clubs, split Div 1 and Div 2 into a North and South league and then to split the fixtures after Christmas.

In real terms this would mean if you were in the top 6 of either division BEFORE Xmas you would be fighting for the Championship or promotion. If you were in the bottom 6 you would be fighting against relegation. 

The biggest change is that 5 teams would get relegated from the bottom six of National 2 AFTER Xmas. With regional winners getting an automatic place.

These are radical ideas and ones that should not be made without the clubs views therefore all members have been invited to make their thoughts known. BEFORE 15th September 2003. Please e-mail them to stephen.barlow@englandhockey.org

11th August 2003

Kath MacDonald announced as new Club Coach 

After assessing several candidates we are pleased to announce that Kath
MacDonald has been appointed as Club Coach for the 2003-2004 season.  Kath who works as an Osteopath, is a Level 3 coach, the current East U17 Girls coach, and has played National Prem hockey. 

Kath takes on the responsibility of coaching the Ladies 1st team from the highly successful Sandie Lister and will also make sure the other sections benefit from her experience too. Some sessions are planned with the Men's section, as well as with the Juniors. 

While Kath unfortunately will not be able to take every training session for the entire club she is responsible for making sure that we are utlising the existing coaches we have and also making sure that those coaches have as much help as they need with, training plans, equipment etc. She will also liaise closely with the Junior section to make sure we develop our Junior players in the best way possible and help in setting up an Ipswich Academy. Kath is rightly very excited about the opportunity and we hope together we can start a new phase of development for Ipswich Hockey Club.