Pelicans host junior tournament

Pelicans Hockey Club has done it again with another very successful junior tournament on Sunday.

The club hosted an event for the U10s in the morning and for the U12s in the afternoon with teams from Pelicans, Dereham, Long Sutton, Magpies, North Norfolk, Norwich City, Norwich Dragons and Wisbech battled it out for glory.

With 37 teams entered in total, the tournament was split between the U10s playing round-robin games (boys) and play-offs after the group games (girls) and the U12s playing play-offs after the group games (boys) and a Golden Cup and Silver Plate for the girls.

Teams started to arrive early to warm up and play the sport they love.

The skill of all the players was brilliant to watch, with goals being scored and tackles being made in what will hopefully be a lifetime hockey journey.

Special mention to Charlie Adkin and Liam Allitt who played the whole U10 tournament for Dereham because they were short of players.

Max Dowers, Alex Culyer, and junior Andrew-Sunny Griggs played the whole U12 tournament for North Norfolk because they were short of players.

To make any tournament work you need support behind the scenes. The club is grateful to Ben Allen of Allen Tomas and Co Financial Management for being the main sponsor for the Junior Section.

The day was organised by Marelize Verdoes, junior club captain, with plenty of volunteers that made it a great team effort.

This year Verdoes worked with other Norfolk junior clubs to use an app from Sporty Software Solutions to make scoring and results a bit more professional.

Thanks to main page sponsor 4 Way Group for keeping the cost for the clubs down and Team Bootcamp, Flower Cake Fairy, Sport101 and V&J Knitwear for making the tournament possible by sponsoring a result page.

Samantha Wagstaff, Judith Stout, Maria Lynch looked after the clubhouse kitchen, prepping the bacon baps, hotdogs and pastries while Chloe Drew, Sam Philips and Sam Woodstock manned the squad Shack and bar pitch side.

Nicola Pluck, Marelize Verdoes and Dominique Eagle took charge of the admin side, checking in the teams, using the new results app and submitting the final scores for presentation.

Keeping time and blowing the horn for centralised timing, the club had Jo Rowland and Tara Dixon making sure they didn’t go of the schedule.

Without the score collectors that ran after each game to get the results, upload them to the app and report back to admin, it would have not gone so smoothly; James Ashby, Riley Page, Alfie Wagstaff, Charlotte Kivlin, Rebecca Sheppard, Harriet Reeves , Shu-Hui Liu all did a brilliant job.

Sally Woolstenholmes and Steve Rowland photographed the day’s proceedings.

Finally, thanks to all the umpires who helped throughout the day and guided the club’s Young Leaders, most of them being on the pitch between 9am and 3:30pm.

These were: Graham Brooks, Sam Phillips, Kirwin Christoffels, Kiona Sequeira, John Bland, Arran Woodcock, Stuart Olley, Marianne Rockcliffe, Lee Dowers, Tracy Bower, Justin Freeman (North Norfolk), Richard Morford (Norwich City).

The Young Leaders who received plenty of umpiring guidance were: Savannah Sherry, Savannah Spary, Jemima Snaith, William Eagle, Juan Verdoes, Arthur van Aalst, Rufus Freeman, Phillippa Hingley, Willem Freeman and Jess Houghton.

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