Hello and welcome to the “pathway” for aspiring hockey players.
Brief outline of the process.
1 – Schools, clubs and individuals are sent a registration form to complete for those who need to attend a Development Centre (DC).
2 – DCs are for new players who have entered the process for the first time and also to those who did not make it to T1 in the previous year.
3 – There are 5 centres in the County and tend to cover all age groups -U13, U14, U15, U16 and U17 for both Genders.
4 – These are currently, Marden HC, Holcombe HC, Sevenoaks HC (held at Tonbridge School), Canterbury HC and Folkestone HC.
5 – There is no ‘compulsion’ to attend a particular one.
6 – The registration is controlled centrally and will have a cut-off date for completion. (link to follow)
Players are entered on Club Buzz centrally.
7 – These are then sorted into the 5 DCs and sent to these centre Managers.
8 – The Manager in turn will send out a letter to all participants detailing dates, times and costs.
9 – The fee needs to be paid before the first DC session on acceptance of place.
10 – There 6hrs for DC’s. Some will be over 2 Sundays and others 3 Friday evenings. These are dependent on available resources.
11 – Once the DCs have finished the manager will send back to me showing which players have been nominated for County Academy Centres (AC) for the next stage (AC T1)
12 – Club Buzz is updated to reflect this.
13 – The 5 age groups will be combined across genders, giving us a total of 10 squads and lists will then be sent to the AC Managers.
14 – The AC centres may change year on year and age groups dependent on available resources.
15 – The Manager for the age group/gender will send out a letter confirming AC T1 details including date, times and cost.
16 – The fee would need to be paid before the first session on acceptance of place.
17 – Once again there is 6hrs and could be over 3 Fridays or 2 Sundays.
18 – Once AC T1 has been completed they will update their list and indicate who has been nominated to train for the Academy T2 (County Squad).
19 – The list is sent to me to update Club Buzz.
20 – Letters will be sent out by the AC Manager, including to those who have been nominated with details of the next stage and also to those who did not.
21 – Fees for AC T2 needs to be paid on acceptance of the place to the County squad.
22 – Kit can then be ordered once squads have been confirmed.
23 – There will then be a number of sessions for the County squad prior to the South County Championship.
24 – This will involve Friday nights training session followed by matches on the Sunday.
25 -There is normally 4 Sundays involving 8 matches against other Counties.
Development and Academy Centres are administered by Kent Hockey. If you would like more information you can search these pages or else contact Dave Parsons on kentplayerpathway@outlook.com The following links contain more information about development and academy centres in Kent, what and who they are for and how you can get involved.
Development Centres Academy Centres
Kent is proud to be an administrator of the pathway, competing in the Southern Region.
If you are interested in being involved in the Kent Player Pathway system – please note that there are currently open roles for the following: Coaches and Managers
If you are interested please contact the Kent Vice President for Junior Hockey at Kentjuniors@outlook.com
We are always on the look out for coaches – and if you are interested in being a part of the Kent Junior coaching team please contact Kentjuniors@outlook.com