Our Community Coaching

Havant Hockey Club has been at the centre of the Borough for well over 100 years.

In the 1970s we were one of the first clubs in the country to establish a Junior Section and in the 1990s we extended our coaching support into the Community.

While our Community Programme is currently focused on the engagement of the young, we believe this leads to a healthier community overall. Children grow into teenagers and adults and then to seniors. Havant HC has a well organised and committed membership across all ages. Taking organised sport into the community will result in all these benefits.

Many players who start in our juniors Programme return to the Club and to the Borough following higher education or other work. They even end up bringing their own children back to the club.

Our Community Programme includes a mixture of schools with children from varying demographic backgrounds and an increasing list of schools from different areas in the Borough.

One of our key aims is to make the Havant College pitch more available to children from all backgrounds in the age range of 5-13 years and from right across the Borough. The benefit also extends to older children from 14 years upwards and young adults who help with coaching.

This provides them with a pathway to coach themselves and also to teach, should they wish to pursue that as a potential career. We also have plans to extend our Community work to the disabled and to older and or less mobile people and become involved with other projects outside of hockey, but still under our Club Community banner.

To find out more how Havant Hockey works in the Community, or to book onto our next Hockey Camp, please contact the community team.

Hockey Camps

Hockey camps are run during school holidays at a very affordable price. Parents with siblings are offered discounted rates and anyone who is unable to afford this is subsidized; no one is turned away on affordability.

Our camps not only benefit the children but also their parents who may not be able to take time off work during school holidays, do not have the holiday allocation from their work to do so, or who may struggle with the high cost of childcare. The take-up is high with between 30 to 50 children signed up for each camp throughout the year. The camps are, in many cases, attended by children from our partnership schools, where our coaches have introduced hockey directly to their school.

We encourage all children from every background to join our camps and we help develop social skills as much as the skills of hockey. During our Summer camps we have added health and diet choices to our daily teaching Programme.

The camps also provide an opportunity for the development of coaches. This provides vocational opportunities for young people to develop their skills in coaching and providing sport in the Community. These young coaches are significant influencers to the younger children and act as role models for them too.

Supporting Local Schools

We have developed a ‘six week’ coaching scheme to help ‘skill up’ primary school teachers and auxillary staff. This helps build confidence, knowing the children will be a lot safer and engaged in lots of fun hockey-based activities. 

All plans are worked up to meet the individual needs of the teacher within the confines of their unique facilities. We always try and use the school hockey equipment first or we recommend equipment to them if they are lacking, so that they are fully resourced to continue hockey during future curriculum sessions.  In some cases, where money is not available within a school P.E. budget, our own Club sponsors have donated the equipment required to keep the sport continually active in the school.

After School Clubs

Sustainability is the name of the game. After we have worked with the children in school curriculum time, we have also created an After (or Before) School Hockey Club to keep the enthusiasm rolling. 

This means that many of those that have now experienced hockey can continue at a club, within their own school. The clubs often take place on a concrete playground due to the challenging lack of facilities in the Borough, some schools do have the option of using indoor facilities, which is ideal for poor weather.

We currently run permanent clubs, all 4 terms of the year in several schools across the Borough, with plans to significantly increase these numbers in the next 18 Months.

Coach Development

Alongside our Community Work, with the help of our Sponsors we have put a group of aspiring juniors on Coaching Pathways. This support enables them to become more experienced and to gain recognized coaching qualifications, and to then support and lead sessions on all our schemes. In the past year alone, we have been working with approximately 15 coaches and helpers as well as supporting many other children that need to gain Duke of Edinburgh experience, through coaching a known sport. 

Many of our supported coaches, also volunteer in different junior groups helping to keep the coaching strong within our Club, and several have become Hockey Coaches at Schools and Colleges across the UK.  They become more confident leaders, good communicators and they really enjoy giving back to the next generation. Many of the children, without doubt, view these coaches as positive role models and draw inspiration from their time together.