An early rise on Monday 30th July took us to Lee Valley Hockey centre in Stratford. We had been nominated to attend the Young Leaders Conference by Skelly as a thank you for our help and commitment to the club.

When we arrived we entered through the Premium experience area and received our clubhouse wristbands. As we were led around the back of the arena we saw the Dutch team leaving after morning training. We were welcomed into the clubhouse and given name badges and an England Hockey goodie bag. This was our first opportunity to meet the other young leaders and visit the stands around the room offering guidance in coaching, umpiring, volunteering, university hockey and how social media can help promote clubs.

During our day we also witnessed Korea and Australia train on the second pitch :-0!!
Helen Richardson-Walsh spoke to us all about her career, her passion for the game and her desire for us as young leaders to be the voice of the future, ensuring that all members of our clubs have their voices listened to. Also she shared her gold medal with us for a photo opportunity!!

A representative from BUCS spoke about the importance of including all of our experiences in sport for college and university applications.

Then our adults left us for a dragons den style activity called Lions den. We networked with others in the room to establish a group of ten. Each group had to think of an idea to introduce hockey to young people. We hope to share this with Gibo and the junior section, as our idea was endorsed by Mike Stoddard, the accountant for England hockey. On the panel there was also Sally Munday CEO and Royston Howgarth non-executive chairman of the board.

Whilst we were busy formulating our idea with the help of Simon Mason, ex England international and triple Olympian, we had a surprise visit by Alex Danson. She shared how proud and thankful she and the team are for the contribution we all give to working with young people across our clubs.

The lions den activity was really good as we met new people and shared all our ideas through presentations to the panel and the rest of the room!! A bit daunting but we all supported each other.

Following that we were met by our adults and visited fan central and then later enjoyed the Spain ?? vs Belgium ?? and Argentina ?? vs New Zealand ?? games witnessing some fantastic hockey and being directly behind the goal saw some top class short corners!!!

To finish this amazing day we were lucky enough to get a selfie with Delfina Merino!!

Thank you for this opportunity, we hope this will help the club in the future.
After a really amazing day we felt really lucky to have been involved in this and learned so much, it will be good to be able to share it with you.

Thank you
Hattie and Clara Miles ?