I am up at 1am for our 3am airport meet and the adrenaline is pumping as I write this blog, writes Hockey Mentors Founder Jack Childs. I have set myself 1 hour aside to write and I’m hoping for some flow. After months of planning and years of hard work it is time to take our place on the World Stage at the official junior event linked to the Hockey World Cup. Very exciting. Our 4 teams (U16 girls, U16 boys, U18 girls, U18 boys) will compete against top Dutch clubs, top South African schools, the USA girls national teams and a top German club in a 3-day tournament, alongside having the opportunity to watch the Hockey World Cup after too.
We do this as an independent organisation, who have never had any funding, have no facilities and have no official position in the talent system. And as an organisation who has players from a state school and/or ethnic minority demographic who broadly speaking are at a comparative disadvantage compared to white private school players in the English hockey system. We believe increasing access into elite pathways (i.e. junior international hockey) is win-win and a competitive advantage for the sport we all love.
The invite for the World Youth Festival came in February this year. Our U14 boys were out in Barcelona playing the Catalonia regional team when the organiser of the World Youth Festival saw our team playing and invited us to this tournament. I was so excited for our players. However, the problem was I had committed to not doing any more tours this year as our finances and admin time were already so stretched. It was a big ask. In moments like this my sense is most people would be logical and make the decision that it just really didn’t make sense but as an entrepreneur who has always been driven primarily by purpose my whole being was like f*** it, we have to make this work. It’s a once in a lifetime kinda thing and I want our players to experience it. You then start thinking ‘how can we’ rather than ‘why we can’t’ and the energy starts changing.
SO WE WENT FOR IT. 4 TEAMS- U16 BOYS, U16 GIRLS, U18 GIRLS, U18 BOYS.
As often when you stretch yourself, you make mistakes. Players and parents were super keen and happy to stretch themselves financially, so filling the teams was simple but the organisational finances were tricky. Historically we have done a model where we advertise up-front the cost for not only the tour but also the flights. This has always worked. However, with the changing international situation the flight costs suddenly went way higher than we had anticipated once already advertised and I also momentarily screwed up by getting some of my calculations around tour costs wrong. We were looking at a full tour and lots of excited players but also a crazy £11,000 loss which really would have put massive financial pressure on us.
So I asked the parents for help.
To be honest I found getting the right price for the tour so hard, as even though we have always worked on a breaking even basis for tours the finances of this tour even for that were huge. This is no one’s fault. I will eventually write a proper blog on the finances of helping players play junior international hockey but ultimately with flights, hotels, pitches and the organisers having to make some money these things are never going to be cheap. So I under-charged as I refused to go over a certain limit and even that under-charge was based on finances I had under-calculated, so really it wasn’t my finest entrepreneurial hour! However, I knew an honest email and the trust we had built up with parents would support this.
The parents helped.
We managed to raise a further £5,000. The loss of roughly £6,000 was hardly ideal but was manageable and we could work around it.
The finances were only one way we had to defy the odds. Other challenges included how to prepare teams that don’t train together for a level of international competition that was high, the complex logistical challenges of a 6-day tour that was the longest we had ever done and how to balance the high demands on our time this tour would bring with the other things we needed to deliver in Hockey Mentors.
People always underestimate the level of preparation needed for a tour like this. And as the person responsible for such a large project in a very small team that has no full-time employees you find yourself being dragged all over the place into a range of different tasks. I love the challenge though. One minute you are thinking about what positions players should play, the next you are thinking about who hasn’t filled in the travel consent form yet, the next you are discussing a team’s off-pitch schedule with the parent manager and then you are discussing the best social media action shots with the volunteer social media managers. It is multi-faceted, fast paced and really helps you develop your leadership skills.
At the tour I only have two key objectives.
Make sure everyone is safe and create an environment where everyone can enjoy it to the max, including myself. We have lots of talented players and many have/will go on to play junior international hockey but the chances of them making it to senior international level are slim. Hence the tours are about much more than supporting the journey of aspiring senior internationals; they are about creating life-long memories and key personal skills that will help the players thrive in future life.
Boom- blog completed 10 mins early. Its 1:50am and its time to go to London Luton Airport for what I hope will be an epic experience.
