Carlow Hockey Club to field U18 ladies team this season

Hockey in Carlow? In relation to other sports, the game may be somewhat down the pecking order in terms of profile and local interest in the county.

Yet the Carlow hockey club fields three ladies teams in Leinster and its home venue at St Leo’s College has a state of the art all-weather pitch and floodlights to match any other facility never mind in Carlow but in the entire country.

Now the club is planning to field an under 18 ladies team. Anne Marie Meaney is heavily involved with the club and is manager of the underage team.

“The club has been in operation for a very long time but this is the first time we have had an under 18 girls team,” she points out.

“A good bit of work was done over the last 5-6 months to get it to this stage,” she adds.

In the past, the adult teams would have been siphoning off promising young players who play and had played in schools such as St Leos and the Kilkenny colleges. That was fine but they would have lost a number of those players who might have felt intimidated and were worried that they were not good enough to play at the next level. Not that the young ones weren’t made feel welcome. They were but not all the young players went forward and sporting friendships were fractured.

 “Normally the 16-18 year olds would have to go on and play ladies. There was a difficult progression for them. It was a big leap up to ladies so to get an under 18 team off the ground is fantastic for the club,” says Anne Marie.

“While some girls do play with those ladies teams this gives young players an opportunity to play additional hockey with their own age group. A lot of girls do drop out of sport but to be able to stay with their friends is key.

“Playing with your friends is probably the most important thing. When they would have gone from under 16 they would disperse. Some wouldn’t go as it was too big a step. Before they wouldn’t have had an opportunity to play with their friends so this is the opportunity to stay together,” emphasises Anne.

She says that if players feel comfortable playing adult hockey they will be more than welcome to do so and will be helped to integrate themselves into the club structure.

"At the moment there is an interest group numbering about 20 underage players. After that they would regularly have 16-17 in training. Some of the players are involved with other sports and that is recognised by the underage management team. One of the hockey squad played in the Carlow LGFA county football finals recently “Those players will be facilitated as much as possible,” acknowledges Anne.

In one way it is an acknowledgement of the popularity of hockey in Carlow that the training is on at 8.30 on Friday nights and that they cannot get an earlier time yet.

“It is the testament to the work of so many people. We have a fabulous pitch with great lights. Up to this, we didn’t have home games and all our games had to be played in Loretto College in Kilkenny. Now we can host games and we have lights which allows us play at night,” says Meaney.

Carlow under 18 hockey training takes place at 8.30-9.30pm every Friday at St Leo’s College hockey pitch. All welcome. For more information contact Anne Meaney (086 8196990) or Liam O’Byrne (087 7382575).