Research Paper
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The Hockey Mentors (HM) mission centres around developing the potential of junior performance hockey players from state-school and/or ethnic-minority backgrounds, who are considered to be at a comparative disadvantage in being able to reach England junior international squads through the England Hockey talent pathway. The research focuses around the central question of what role Hockey Mentors has played in helping state school and/or ethnic-minority players reach England junior international squads, which historically have themselves been less representative of the players who HM seeks to support.
Methodology
From January to March 2026 researcher Cathy Wardle interviewed nine HM players – five girls and four boys. At a glance this may seem a small sample, however it accounted for a relatively high proportion of HM players currently in England U16 squads, at around 40%, plus two former England U16 players. We also made the decision not to seek further participants after nine interviews as the freelance nature of the research limited the time available, and we had also reached a ‘saturation point’ where new insights were not appearing across the interviews. Eight of the nine players were at state schools at the time of interview and two were from ethnic minority backgrounds. Their time involved in HM varied in length, with four having joined four years ago when HM was starting out, but another having joined as recently as in the last year.
Findings
There were six broad areas where HM appeared to have played a role in the players’ England journeys. These can be summarised as follows:
- Efforts to help players specifically target England
- Exposure to high-level hockey which helped players to raise their level
- Support from HM’s expert coaching team;
- The priming of players’ minds off pitch
- Social connections forged amongst players
- How HM connected players to other high-level hockey environments
Conclusion
The fact that such a broad range of factors contributed to the players’ England success speaks highly of the multi-faceted nature of the HM programme, with the organisation seemingly finding success in its approach of developing players across a three-fold structure of connections, competitions and coaching.
Future Research
We would welcome future research from independent people/organisations that goes beyond evaluating HM effectiveness to look at insights that could more broadly inform policy for the talent development system. Areas could include exploring the experiences of players at a comparative disadvantage in talent academies who don’t make NAGs squads, a deep dive into the comparative disadvantage factors in the talent system, the role of social capital in progressing in the talent system, the journeys of players who play senior international hockey to see how opportunity is shaped over time and the experiences of parents/guardians in navigating the talent development system.
