This is it! We’re ready to go! Membership ready!

Everything is in place; coaches, pitches, competitions, academy’s, indoor hockey, guest memberships……. we are ready for you to join.

We have had a great response to our “Intent to Join” survey and are ready to start a club with a vision to become the best, junior focused, hockey club in the country.

Everyone who registered via the form has been loaded in our membership system and will receive an email this weekend, asking them to complete the process.

We are so grateful to those committing to join us and promise to work tirelessly to make HC Hawks an incredible experience for our children and young adults.

Checkout some more detail below and watch out for the official system generated email this weekend (17th/18th of August).

There is an app you can load on to your phone, with the calendar of what is going on, and the same functionality plus lots more is available from a laptop / PC. 

Once you’ve signed up once, you can come back to Hawks year after year with very little additional admin. 

Players – There is some awesome functionality which will allow us to develop personal development programs, give rewards & recognition, as well as the basics of keeping your hockey organised so your parents can get you to more of it.

Us – We can administer the whole club from this system, which will allow us to provide great hockey, manage safety, sell kit to keep the costs down, report on trends over time so we can have constant improvement and sort of important, make life easy for volunteers so we can have more people helping to make a good experience. 

There is a LOT to the system, much of which we are still learning. 

We know not everyone likes learning new technology, and we’re not 100% sure yet what you will like / loath about it, but the benefits are clear and ask you help us adopt it as much as possible.

Your first experience will be signing up for this seasons membership. Many will find it a breeze, some will find it a challenge, but please give it a good go. 

More specific instructions coming out to members this weekend. 

Club Kit and Shop

Our club kit is now decided (those who have followed this progress, navy bottoms and orange won our surveys) and is available to purchase via our own club shop.

There are some why’s, how’s & what’s, to share with you about the kit.

Why’s

We wanted the best quality kit available, particularly for growing children, we want you to purchase kit which will last, while being comfortable for the kids…… This (and the fact they supply the GB hockey team) is why we chose Mizuno as our kit provider. 

Mizuno also seem to have the best sizing system to suit younger players, based on height. This is not only easier to understand (than guessing if age 10 is going to fit), but means we will have more members able to buy junior sizes, and avoid being charged the 20% VAT incured on adult size clothing. 

Hawks have chosen (at least in the short term) to run our own kit shop….. this is to keep the cost down for our members, and to some extent, manage the quality of service (so frustrating to use some of these retailers who don’t let you know what is going on with your order). 

Other clubs who use Mizuno kit via a retailer, sell Junior size tops at nearly £40, which seems a lot. Where as taking the retailer out, we can sell at £25 for the same item. 

Obviously this will give us a little headache and there are some implications with supply, but on balance, it seemed the right thing to do. 

How’s

The club kit shop is available via MyClubHouse when you’ve become a member. It’s a pretty simple affair with the club kit available in difference general sizes (Adult or Child), variations of the sizes within that, and finally by gender (we also liked that the fit for girls and boys is appropriate for teenagers, oh, and they have shorts for girls). 

Once you’ve signed up to membership you can access the shop via the MyClubHouse homepage and place orders.

Probably the least great thing about this arrangement is stock and delivery times. Effectively, the light blue match tops are custom made and we have to buy a minimum quantity from Mizuno. What this means is we won’t be able to hold much (or any to start with) “Stock” and delivery times will be a bit of a pain…….. again, on balance, 

What

Given our “newness” we need some help and understanding from you please.

It would be great if you can order the light-blue playing top and socks as a minimum, as quickly as possible (we went with Navy Shorts / Skorts so people can wear generic ones if needed), though we would love everyone in full kit. 

Because we are being the “retailer” we take quite a bit of risk with buying and holding stock…… For this reason, its unlikely we will be able to refund anyone for kit (unless we can find another buyer) and even swapping sizes will be tricky to start with, so please be as accurate as you can. Faulty kit will of course we dealt with. 

There is some cool “training” and “pitch-side” options available, we would love to see Hawks in as much club kit as we can but we want hockey to be as affordable as possible, so please don’t think you need the full range. 

Ignore the fact the system says “out of stock”, we are out of stock, but your order is allowing us to stock up. 

And bear with us, it’s going to be quite a few weeks until we have the kit, we hope in time for our first matches, but maybe not. We will find a temporary solution if needed. The people running the shop are volunteers, helping us all have affordable, high-quality kit, please be mindful of this, as we muck up your orders 🙂

Start Date – 8th of September

We are going for the 8th of September as our first session of the season. 

School starts for most the week before, so we thought it might be to much of a distraction to start on the 1st. 

We would like to make a big deal of the first Sunday, so having as many people as possible is the goal. 

We are aware that some county hockey trials are on the 8th, so it might not be possible for some to attend. When we know the time of these we will take a look what we can do to try and get those groups together. 

For those with midweek training, these sessions will begin the week commencing 9th of September. 

The awesome new MyClubHouse system will make it nice and clear on the rest of the season dates, like school holidays. 

Welfare Officer: Welcome & Plans

We are super excited that Elisa Harrod has agreed to take on the clubs Welfare Officer role. Elisa is a teacher (head of music infact), mum and basically massively over qualified for this role. That’s why we are ecstatic she has agreed to take it. 

Being a junior club, this is the most important role, ensuring that we provide not only safe, but emotionally supportive hockey to young people.  Using her professional experience, Elisa is brilliantly placed to run great programs to help achieve this.

For Hawks mission to send 1000’s of young people in to adulthood playing hockey, we know that its not just about having hockey skills, its about having an emotional connection with the sport. 

Our welfare team is no only focused on the basics of DBS checks, safeguarding and first aid, we want to go much further and look at how young people can be involved in shaping the club, gain leadership skills and feel deeply connected with hockey. Much more info on this to come throughout the season.