4th September 2006
Since our last meeting I have attended local borough action group meetings in Manchester, Salford, Stockport and Wigan with apologies to Bury and Trafford as theirs clashed with other county meetings. I have attended LSYHA and LGMJHA meetings and a county presentation evening during the summer as well as attending County and Regional AGM’s. There have been two Regional HDO meetings in Wakefield with another scheduled for Monday 25th September. I also meet up every quarter with the NW HDO’s as much of our work overlaps boundaries we are scheduled to meet a week on Wednesday before the next NW YUAG meeting. We have had a special meeting of this group to discuss LTAD implications and give our fed back prior to closing date of 31st May 06. As well as our AGM in July followed by a brief exec meeting all these minutes and agenda’s were posted on the Greatersport intranet for members of this group to download. David Harden, Aasim Chaudhry and myself attended an Indoor meeting at Manor High on Monday 26th June 06 and will report on this later in the agenda. I had a meeting of the Borough officers responsible for Hockey on Friday 16th June where recording of all borough Hockey activity was discussed now we no longer have active sports. It would really help my future employment if I can present healthy activity figures and hope that you will all support your officers by giving them any information on activity.
During the first week of the summer holidays Vicky Hirst agreed to deliver the new Leadership Award, which now encompasses the theory of the Foundation Umpire Award and had 12 candidates on this course. The 2 days were very successful and as a consequence there is now more young Leaders – 54 from the New Course in Greater Manchester. We are hopeful that they will register for the new Leadership plus award (20 to date) where young candidates can log voluntary hours and gain a further Hockey Awards and take up to 50 hours onto the Millennium Volunteer Scheme the on line log book is now fully functional and now want any mentors able to verify their young Leaders work on line themselves, several of them are now registered for MV now they have turned 16. Leadership candidates can be assessed umpiring for 15mins in a practical situation to gain the full Foundation Umpires Award as long as they passed the theory paper. I offered all candidates that wished to be assessed the U.11’s festival on Saturday 13th May 06 with 12 taking up the offer and now have 26 Foundation umpires of which 10 now have their Level One.
Since May 05 – 06 there were 63 candidates potentially to be assessed. Having had discussions with Mike and Vicky it was proposed for me to write to all successful Level One umpire candidates whom have passed their theory papers since May 05 – 06 to ensure that they have got their card completed in time for a Hockey Festival May 20th/21st, 2006 at Belle Vue where as many prospective Level One candidates as possible will be able to have their assessment done! 20 took up the offer and 18 are now qualified Level One Umpires. Our junior umpire programme in Greater Manchester continues to move forward with 10 young level one umpires having gained their Level One since their Youth Games experience of 05. With many of last years Foundation Umpires working in the Greater Manchester Junior League or the County Development Centre accessing mentoring that is on offer and now need to be made aware of the North Junior Umpire Programme having had some of our older young umpires added to this register and being offered Regional and National umpiring opportunities. This means they too can be allocated for North events such as the Regional Minis and Junior County games. I am still hoping to see a Junior Umpire Award run in the county shortly i.e. 8 – 13!! More of our Young umpires were asked to umpire at the youth Games this year and will be given the opportunity to do their Level One Umpire Award later this month.
Peter Sutherland, Matthew Lomax and Daniel Moorfield were successful in their application to be Young Officials and Leaders at the National Mini Championship in Nottingham in May and thoroughly enjoyed the experience with EH feedback being very positive about them - Lets hope we can have even more there next year!
There have been 2 further Level One Umpire Courses that Mike Hollinshead tutored one at Altrincham in May and the other at Sale Sports Club in July with 40 candidates successfully completing the theory paper. With another course scheduled for Sunday 17th September 06 at Altrincham.
The Gk Academy which started on Monday 26th September 05 at Belle Vue has been an excellent venture and one we wish to continue this season although with the world cup and its build up have meant our coaches who are coaches or England players are not available until Monday 6th November. We can only once again thank Manchester CC for their financial support to this venture and ask that they would continue to support this.
Coaches keep asking me for assistance to do Level One and Two VRQ Coaching courses but with my budget extremely limited until March 07 all I can offer is a pay back scheme where any coaches that are funded do coaching work for free in recognised Greater Manchester activity such as GK Academy and Junior County. I also want to implement a tracking scheme for hockey coaches linked in with CPD within Greater Manchester starting from them first becoming qualified through one of our courses and issuing them with a registration form and encouraging them to create a port folio - very important as Coach Licensing moves ever nearer! We had 18 candidates on the Level One Course in May and 23 on the Level Two Course here in Greater Manchester in June/July of which 9 were women. Working along side Paul Connolly our Sports Coach UK rep I am going to be offering some Coaching Workshops starting with an Introduction to LTAD on Monday 25th September 06 at Belle Vue from 6.30pm with others to follow such as guide to mentoring - watch our website.
I have delivered a Fundamentals Coaching for Teachers Course in Stockport and involve in total 16 persons from education.
Their was a support group meeting on Monday 12th June 2006 at Belle Vue which was attended by the usual hard core lets hope there are more of us there on Monday 18th September here at Belle Vue. Wigan HC had their assessment at the end of June and one or two criteria to meet before they are awarded Clubs 1st but that is imminent. I was also invited to do a short presentation on Hockey’s Club 1st Accreditation at Stockport Sports Council meeting in early June. I also offered a Club For All workshop in May to all the clubs that are working towards Clubs 1st with 5 clubs in attendance.
The U.11 Festival took place on Saturday 13th May 06 and 8 boroughs were represented with Rochdale and Salford unable to come and 115 youngsters did the stix skills award in the morning and now have their certificates and badges. We then had a Boys and Girls festival during the day with a presentation of medals and certificates including fair play at the end of the day with some teams returning Sunday am for more games. Our Foundation Umpires umpired during the festival and our newly formed Greater Manchester Youth Panel did the entire organisation for the event.
The Youth Games Saturday 1st July 2006 at Belle Vue with U.13/15 age groups for boys and girls 7 a side using both pitches all day was a huge success with 38 out of a possible 40 teams taking part. A sponsor for our sport came forward from my last report being read out at a Stockport HAG meeting and our thanks go to Kelvin Briggs and the Alliance and Leicester for their generous sponsorship for this event. Thanks to Vicky for volunteering to be event organiser despite the fateful England game extending the day. Our young volunteers that assisted her with the scoring and tournament organisation were absolutely superb. Although we need to address the problem of colour of borough kit, which has been, passed on to the events group along with the poor catering facilities that were at Belle Vue.
The Mini Games for U.11’s took place at Wigan on Thursday 6th July and Marple Hall on Thursday 13th July where Hockey was played by every borough.
My many volunteers were in action on August 17th at Belle Vue for the Men’s international v Holland covering ticket sales, seated stands, team hosts, programme sellers and ball patrols. This bodes well for the European Men’s and Women’s cup here in Manchester in August 2007.
The Junior League was finally completed in May and all age groups had their respective presentations although we appear to have mislaid 2 of the trophies for U.11 and U.15 Boys. I would like to get these engraved in time for the start of this seasons league which is well in hand following the Junior League committee having met and finalised details for the coming season.
The website is becoming increasingly a very powerful marketing and information tool i.e. www.greatersport.co.uk. and I try to keep the Hockey pages as up to date as I can. Coaches can be advertised for and clubs can register their clubs details once they are part of the Clubs 1st support group.
Finally I must thank all of you for your continued, tireless efforts and hard work as well as your support of me in the development of Hockey in Greater Manchester and hope you can assist me in sorting this problem of Auditing Clubs through lack of contacts.
Penny Moorfield Hockey Development Officer