Tournament Successes for Junior & Youth Players
Congratulations to Sienna Ricciardi and Lucy Rae from the Girls u12s, who having been selected for West Panthers, were part of that team who recently won the Mercia Cup at Malvern College. An amazing achievement, well done girls!
This is in addition to some of your older teens, who will have seen from our other social channels, have been representing Bristol University Talent Academy at the TA Cup in Nottingham. The girls team (including Jos Reynard and Nina Blackburn from the Ladies 1s) narrowly missed out a medal in their comp, following a nailbiting shoot out…

Mixed Summer League
Following the enforced break from hockey during the strange times of 2020, Wotton as a community club used the Summer off-season to develop an Inter Club Mixed Summer League. With 4 Men’s and 3 Ladies teams it can be a challenge for all sections to come together and enjoy hockey as a whole club. The mixed Summer league that grew out of reconnecting as a club has now run for the last 4 seasons, with an aim to offer fun mixed ability games and umpiring opportunities to the senior section of the club.

This season it has again thrived. The beautiful setting of Wotton Community PARC provided a perfect evening for an opening launch night.
60 players from age 13 to…’slightly older’ provided the sporting entertainment, with a BBQ and Bar to entertain the crowd.

The initial run of games saw all adult sections of the club represented in 6 teams with 90+ players taking part in 15 games over 5 weeks. Another 3 weeks in Phase 2 (thanks to players demand!) saw a further 60+ players and 6 games.
There were goals galore, all players attempting to umpire and lots of laughter, punctuated by some quality hockey. Thank you to all who took part. After what we hope will be successful Winter leagues for all our teams, we will look forward to our inter-club Summer league in 2025
Rhian

Bristol & District Men’s Summer League
The Men’s Summer league team enjoyed an unbeaten run in Division 2, earning them promotion back into the Premier League next season.
The team was made up of a mixture of youth and experience, as we’ve come to expect from Wotton teams.
The brief was to enjoy some more casual hockey against less challenging opposition, but chiefly work on our goal scoring. A disappointing 28 goals during the winter league was replaced with 51 goals in 7 games. The golden stick competition was hotly contested, with Roo coming out as the eventual winner.

Ladies Summer League
For the Ladies section summer league was all about experimenting with new tactics, formations and getting back to enjoying some friendly hockey without the pressure of the official season. With completely different team setups every week ladies from the 1s, 2s and 3s showed constant improvement; with opposition frequently commenting on the teams high standard of performance.
Despite facing several defeats, the players and team are continuing to improve on their tactical skills, understanding many positions and team performances with each match and are excited to see what the 2024/25 season brings

Also, in additional to all of the above Andy has been junior introduction to Indoor Hockey sessions in the sports hall too – hockey never sleeps!!!

Plans are well underway for the 2024/25 season so look out for more updates on this in the near future

Photo Credit: Rhian Whitham