TAMWORTH is firing up for another big weekend on and off the field.
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Hot on the heels of another successful York Cup and Kim Small Shield last weekend, Tamworth’s attention turns to the State U13s Girls Championships, which they’ll both host and launch a double assault on from this morning.
Almost 40 teams are chasing State title glory across four divisions, representing associations from Grafton down to the Southern Highlands and Orange.
The Tamworth A’s will play in Division 1 with the B’s lining up in Division 3.
Both were excited and looking forward to the weekend.
They’ve been preparing for about six weeks. For the A’s, that has incorporated a lot of fitness work to bring them up to the levels that tournament hockey requires.
For more than half of them, this weekend will be their first State Championships.
“We’ve only got two from last year’s (A) team – Lori Edgar and Billie Mitchell,” coach Helen Willis said.
Another six are stepping up from the B team last year. The rest of the side are “complete newbies”.
They’ve got Lithgow first up at 1.30pm, which will be a difficult assignment.
“Lithgow are always pretty strong. I’m sure they will be pretty hard,” she said.
“Then we’ve got the Illawarra (2) team, who hopefully we can get over the top of.”
With three tough games to come tomorrow, their hopes will rest a lot on how they fare in those.
They had a good two-hour session yesterday to brush up on things.
“We’re playing a new structure that a lot of the girls haven’t played before,” Willis said.
It’s a three/two/two/three structure, and is adopted by the higher rep teams.
“They’re starting to get the hang of it now,” she said.
“Hopefully that works.”
She said they have a pretty strong defensive team, even though a few of those in defensive roles would probably prefer to be playing up front.
There seemed to be a wealth of strikers.
Lyn Bagster has what is a young B’s side.
“There’s four or five 10-year- olds,” she said.
A couple of them are backing up from the Kim Small Shield last weekend.
“They’ll do alright as long as they concentrate,” Bagster said.
“They’ve trained well and have all improved during training.”
The biggest challenge for them will be adjusting to grass.
All of their games will be on grass fields.
It’s a surface they’re not really accustomed to.
“It’s a matter of holding your stick upright and making sure of your traps,” Bagster said.
First up for them is Sydney East (2) at 12.30pm.
The goalkeepers got some valuable tuition ahead of the championships yesterday afternoon with former Kookaburras keeper Nathan Burgers conducting a couple of goalkeeping clinics.
The clinics are a regular component of the U13s Championships.
They are primarily a development session, Hockey NSW Northern Inland regional coaching coordinator Blair Chalmers said, but also help out the state selectors.