It's not very often you have the chance to learn from one of the greats in your sport but that's what young hockey players in Armidale were able to do.
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Hockey superstar Mark Knowles was in town and conducted clinics on the New England Girls' School pitch last Thursday.
The Olympic gold medallist, World Champion, four-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist and former World Player of the Year was on-hand to provide both the NEGS athletes and young player from the wider community some valuable tips and tricks of the sport.
NEGS director of sport, Josh Cohen, was ecstatic with Knowles' input.
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"To have someone of Mark's calibre, people often take it for granted, but our girls don't come into a lot of contact with these sort of superstars of their game," he said.
"He worked with our Talented Athlete Program girls first for an hour and he worked on really technical skills with them and provided a really different voice for girls.
"He then did a session with every girl that plays hockey at NEGS and it was really impressive to then see how he could take a really technical session to then cater for both girls that are new to hockey as well as our most experience girls."
Throughout an athlete's career, there are many knockbacks and letdowns.
Knowles addressed his own struggles and spoke about how he shook them off to reach the heights of the sport.
"Throughout his story, he mentioned - and made it quite personable for the girls - about teams he didn't make and how he changed his approach then use that as motivation to keep striving to become a better player," Cohen said.
"He mentioned within his talk that there wouldn't be one athlete that has made every single team they tried out for.
"It is those athletes who use those setbacks as motivation and fuel to then make other teams, they are the ones who come out successful.
"To hear that from someone of Mark's calibre, I think the girls really took a lot of inspiration to go 'I have missed out on a team and I can do that too.'"
Cohen said the groups were "blown away" by what Knowles had to say as well as the skills he worked on with them.
Following the clinics, the school officially opened their new hockey pitch with special guests on hand.
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