Jack Childs
Private School Games: A Day At The Olympic Park
Today is one of my favourite games of the year writes Hockey Mentors Founder Jack Childs- our girls 1st XI love the opportunity to step onto the Olympic pitch where our England/GB teams play and be watched by hundreds of people. We are playing one of the top private schools in the country Haileybury, who finished 3rd nationally last season in what promises to be an exciting game. Yet this is not a private school vs private school match. It is a private school against a team made up of some of the best state school and ethnic minority players [...]
The World Youth Festival: Preparing teams that don’t train together for high-level international competition
A lot of Hockey Mentors (HM) results don’t make sense writes founder Jack Childs. It defies belief for most people that a team of state school and/or ethnic minority players that don’t train together have been able to beat all the top private schools in England, win 60+ medals in national Indoor Hockey UK events, beat all the top clubs and even win high-level international tournaments. I believe there are three critical factors to this: culture, high-quality players and quality coaching. To bring it more to life and help the hockey stick spin around I will take a look at [...]
The World Youth Festival: defying the odds to take 4 teams to the official junior event of the Hockey World Cup
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 [...]
Building The High-Performance Programme
Sometimes things happen so quickly that you don’t have time to take stock- building the High Performance Programme (HPP) has certainly been one of those things, writes Hockey Mentors Founder Jack Childs. 130 junior performance players state school and/or ethnic minority from all around the country on a 2-day camp at one of the top private schools in the country feels normal these days. It isn’t. These players will come from 94 clubs to take part in a 2-day camp at Clifton College in Bristol led by their Director of Hockey Olly Keenan, supported by a team of National [...]
