Well its time to swap your cricket bats, beach spades and surfboards for your hockey sticks as we look forward to starting another season at Jersey Hockey.

As we do so I have been reflecting on what exactly we offer as a sport. Having watched the olympics we so often think about our sport in terms of competition and elite performance and we can look forward to another year where we might win an EH cup and will definitely strive to win the Inter Insular Big Stick. We will also have competive hockey across our for domestic leagues and individual excellence with Talent Academy places and some of our seniors representing at national age group levels.

We might also think about our sport in terms of health and fitness and how hockey offers us the opportunity to run of a few pounds and stay active.

More importantly these days though is the mental wellbeing that sport provides and I think it is here that the link to Community is so important. This can be just getting together with teammates and friends and with our fantastic facility at the Clubhouse and Lee and Nelita's excellent service we can now enjoy those moments over something refreshing after our games.

However this Community and sport offering can't happen without volunteers and this is where Your Sport Needs You. I will list below some opportunities to get involved but my message is simple. Whatever you can do to help please get involved. We already have a fantastic team of volunteers but so much falls on this group so anything you can do to help spread the burden will be tremendously well received.

So let's make our Hockey Community really thrive and get involved.

Umpiring

We are desperately short of umpires this season and if you can only offer to do one game that will still help enormously.

We realise that not everyone feels comfortable to umpire and we have put together an information sheet (see attached) that will provide details of online courses, local support on offer and access to equipment that we hope will break down some barriers and allow you to take part.

Use this link to register your umpiring availability.

Coaching and Support

We still need people to help out with our junior coaching programme. You don't have to be a qualified coach as we have roles to fill even to act as responsible adults during games, or as little as offering to wash the kit or provide half time oranges.

Clubhouse Committee

There are always a list of jobs that need to be doen at the Clubhouse so if you have a few handy skills then we need your help. Specifcally we are looking for sonmeone to join the Genetral Committee as the Clubhouse Chair whose role is to coordinate all of these little jobs that we need doing.

Social Representative

Fancy running a bingo night or have any ideas to bring our community together at the Clubhouse we would love to hear from you.

Media Representative

If you have a bit of flair for language or more importantly these days a little technical knowledge around social media we really need people to help spread the word, post results and generally raise our profile. Maybe there is a student doing a Media qualification that wants to add to the project profile. If that's you get in touch. We are also lookingh fort someone to join the General Committee as the Marketing Chair whose role will be to coordiante all of our media and social communication.

So if you are interested in helping to build our sport and community please get in touch with me at jamesw@jerseyhockey.co.uk or email contact@jerseyhockey.co.uk

Thank you and best of luck for your season ahead.

James Wetherall
President