The Steinhoff Maties Hockey Club recently announced the squads for the 2015 season and in both the men and women’s group the standard of players in higher than in previous years.
It’s a very big year for especially the women’s first team having to defend the USSA, Varsity Hockey and Western Province Grand Challenge titles. First team coach Jenny King has a big group of players to work with seeing that all her players can play in the league and Varsity Hockey like national player, Illse Davids. “The standard of school players increases every year, I expect from the current selected players that we will be able to repeat the team performance results of the club last year,” said King.
The men’s team won the WP Grand Challenge last year, but coach Neville Rothman wants his team to also perform at the USSA tournament this season. Last year Maties finished a disappointing fifth place. The depth and standard of the men’s squad is very good this year with the biggest intake of national u.18/19 players at the club since 2005.
For Rothman the one of the biggest challenges of the coming season is going to be consistency. “We need to make massive improvements on the technical areas and the consistency of our week-to-week performances. We must show a thirst for being better than before without any complacency creeping in!”