By Tania Phillips
Warwick Hockey Association members were hard at work on Saturday preparing for a busy season ahead of their mixed graded competition hitting off tonight at their Queens Park fields in Warwick.
While both their senior competitions will be fully underway after this week, the club’s Participation Director and Representative Coordinator Sarah Monk said there was still time to join in and play the sport.
“We have two come and try – bring a friend session tonight and next Thursday from 4-5pm,” she said.
“It’s a great sport to play, we have a great club. It’s got a very family orientated aspect and if you want to get involved come on down.
“The season is looking really good. It’s looking really strong.
“We started last week but we have our first game in our mix graded competition tonight. We also have a mixed branch competition on Friday nights which is kind of a social competition.
“Both competitions are looking pretty healthy this year and all the teams are looking pretty healthy. We have four teams in each competition.”
While they weren’t playing at the weekend, it was still hands on deck with the association holding a working bee in preparation to replace a fence on the Cowboys side of the ground damaged by floods in the past year. Monk said the new fence will be in place later in the year, with the contractor fitting it in between larger jobs.
“We spent a good chunk of Saturday ripping out old fence posts,” she said.
“Sometime in the next six months a new fence will go up.”
While the seniors will be on the park from this week, juniors don’t start until term two of the school year. However, numbers are also looking good for juniors even though the competition is still well over a month away according to Monk.
“The juniors are looking really good,” she said.
“We’ve got enough for four teams in each of our age groups, under 10s, under 12s and under 14s. We’ve got12 teams in the juniors and we start on 27 April for that.
“It’s a bit hard to start your winter sports when your summer sports are still going in a small community because they all do both,” Monk said explaining the gap between the start between the junior and senior ranks.
