Happy Halloween
To All our members, supporters & sponsors we would like to wish you and your families a Happy Halloween! We look forward to seeing everyone back at the club, in some capacity, sooner rather than later!
As always stay safe, do your bit and we will be back at Grange Road, enjoying hockey in no time!
Hockey Ireland E-Hub
Hockey Ireland has launched their new E-learning platform. The “Hockey Ireland Hub” aims to offer support to all aspects of the hockey community via courses, helpful downloads and articles.
To access the Hockey Ireland Hub please go to: https://hockeyirelandhub.ie/. This link is also available in several areas of the Hockey Ireland website. You will need to create an account to access the resources on the Hub. All aspects of the site will be updated on continuous basis.
Read the Full article here: Hockey.ie
Junior Committee Update!
HALLOWEEN WEEKEND
Training IS on !
Sorry for the confusion with last week’s update, we are delighted to confirm that training IS on this Halloween weekend! So get out your costume and let’s see how many witches and ghosts we can have at training !!
HOWEVER, please make sure that your child can move freely and is able to train in their outfit.
COVID
As Halloween approaches we have now the opportunity to look back and review the first 2 months of opening under new and changing COVID regulations.
The overwhelming response from parents and massive cooperation from all coaches has ensured that we have been able to offer training and much needed outdoor exercise to our Junior members in a safe and secure environment. We can not express enough our thanks to our 140 + Covid Supervisors who have all completed the Sport Ireland Return to Play and Covid Officer online courses and have developed their understanding of how to support the club in this role.
They arrive early hail, rain or snow to meet and greet members, with one Covid Supervisor taking the online register while the other Covid Supervisor sanitises the children’s hands. During the session they support the coaches by constantly reminding the members of the 2 metre social distancing rules and all the protocols in place.
Quite simply without these volunteers we could not train !
So, you know who you are (!) take a bow …. thank you, thank you, thank you!
LEAGUE TEAMS
Please note that coaches will continue to assess the squads over the coming weeks. It now looks as if leagues may start in January and therefore coaches will have until the weekend of the 22nd of November to potentially move players up or down teams if they deem it necessary. Also be aware that there may be movement in January when the league season starts so all members should continue to work hard in training.
FOCUS ON OUR MEMBERS
As you all know we have almost 500 junior members in the Club, these are trained by 37 coaches many of whom coach a number of teams. We have 26 Gaisce students, who hopefully in years to come will become coaches also and we have over 150 active volunteer parents !! This is a huge hockey family, by any standard !
Over the coming weeks we will continue to put the spotlight on some of these people.
This week it is the turn of AOIBH MAGUIRE (pictured in newsletter with her 2019/2020 player of the year award).
We (in particular Inter Girls Team 4) would like to pass on their best wishes and socially distanced hugs to Aoibh Maguire who was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
After informing her mum that she didn’t feel quite right and something was wrong, she was taken to hospital on the 7th of October where the diagnosis hit Aoibh and her family with shock.
Thankfully her surgery went very well and the consultant is confident that Aoibh can start the road to full recovery.Chris traveled to Ballycullen last Tuesday with a signed card from the Inter coaches and the girls in Team 4 and some chocolates to see how she was doing.
Aoibh’s mum has said that all the support the Youths have shown Aoibh has been so beneficial to her recovery. Aoibh will return to the pitch when she is ready, but in the meantime will hopefully manage to get down to the club during a training session to catch up with the girls in her team.
Aoibh, from all the Youths, good luck in your recovery and we can’t wait to see you back at the Club again soon.
CONGRATULATIONS
Special congratulations to Gillian Garrett and Ali Keogh ( who kindly came to talk to our Gaisce students recently ) who are part of the Irish Contingent of Irish Umpires and Officials who have been appointed to the Euro Hockey Tournaments for 2021.
Gillian is an integral part of the Junior Club being both a parent and coach of the 6th Class Boys.
Congrats to you both !
And Finally…
Well done to the INTER GIRLS who all wore PINK to training last Friday night in Aid of Breast Cancer Research. Not only did they add a bit of colour to the evening but they raised almost €200 ! (See pictures in the newsletter)
