By Barnaby Stoner

After completing my last residential week of the AASE hockey course held at Lilleshall National Sports Centre, at the end of July, I was thrilled to be informed by email at the beginning of August, that I had been picked to play at the 2018 School Games National Finals. As part of the England Red team, I would be playing four matches over four days at Loughborough University, which has hosted the School Games since 2016.

The School Games Finals are a four day multi-sport event, led by the Youth Sport Trust, and funded by the National Lottery, and they aim to allow young sportsmen and women to compete and train in a “high quality, high pressure environment”.  Sports include athletics, cycling, netball, cricket, triathlon, tennis, wheelchair tennis and basketball. They organisers copy the experience of Olympic and Paralympic Games athletes by having teams living together in an Athletes Village and having an Opening Ceremony.

The members of the England Red team came from all over the country. We shared some very basic accommodation (a real eye opener for future uni experience) in halls at Loughborough. Each day we were up early, around 7:00am for a training run. After, a team meeting would be held to talk tactics about the upcoming game how we could win against the opposition by using video analysis about our strengths and also their weaknesses. Despite the team only having trained together for 8 days across 5 months we managed to play very fluid hockey. The teams were all quite evenly matched. We drew against Ulster, Scotland, lost to England Blue and in a close final match lost narrowly to the overall winners of the competition England White.

I thoroughly enjoyed the School Games experience. It was a fantastic opportunity to watch not only other hockey matches but also other sporting competitions, the Girls’ cricket was particularly impressive. It was a great privilege to play at such a well organised and prestigious sporting event. I learnt a great deal on and off the pitch, and am looking forward to playing hockey at Felsted for the upcoming season, no doubt playing against some of my fellow England team mates from the School Games.