Hockey Academy Summer 2010

Our Summer Camp was the biggest yet with over 80 children attending. More new coaches were added in Ramsay Bell, Emma Watson and John Martin all part of successful Scotland U 21 teams and Scotland Masters player Tim Wilcock was a great addition to the line up with his experience of hockey at all levels.

Highlights of the camp included a couple of birthdays with Chris McKenzie and Emily Harris Celebrating with cake during lunchtime. Our ever-popular Hockey Tennis tournament (now christened "TennOckey" by the children) took place at all age groups and was as hotly contested as usual. It may be that we will have to invest in Hawk Eye before the Autumn camp begins in October.

Summer also saw the launch of Hockey Academy clothing in Hoodies and Tracksuit Bottoms and these proved very popular especially when the players were told they could have them personalised for only a small additional cost. Don't worry if you missed out, all merchandise is available through the website. We have also updated our picture gallery and you can now buy pictures, calendars, mouse mats and a host of other gifts by clicking on the gallery link.

Hockey Academy Spring 2010

Our Spring Camp was a great success with 40 attending and some great new coaches to learn from.

Cala's Amy Brodie (Scotland U16/U18/U21 and Senior Caps) joined the coaching staff and run some great sessions including lessons on scoring at the back post with a sliding dive. As you can imagine, this caused a lot of fun for the players with a variety of styles and results on show.

Inverleith's John Harris and Callum Milne, 2 more Scotland players also joined the team and worked with the older children on a variety of skills including Drag-Flicking. John and Callum were a great success especially with their sense of humour and fun, which was never too far away and we look forward to welcoming them back in the future.

We also welcomed Mike Rea to the ranks. Mike is a New Zealander who is working as a teacher in Edinburgh and was delight to give the players an Antipodeans perspective on hockey.

Well know Scottish Coach Mabel Neish also ran a session for us. Mabel is famous as being the only woman to coach not one but two teams in the Men's to league. She was very popular with the children and I am sure they learned a lot from her.

Hockey Academy Update 2010

We have just confirmed our dates for 2010 you can find them in our camps page and you will also find the application forms. We will have another great line up of coaches and also special goal keeping coaching for all you goal keepers as we don't want to leave you out, we have one of the best goal keeping coaches on our staff who has worked with many top keepers in Scotland.

Some of the children who attended last year's camps went on to play for Scotland at Junior International level and we will be doing our best to get as many of you as possible up to that level.

Our Coaches all have the same outlook, you can learn to a very high standard and still enjoy yourself. So if you want to improve and have great fun doing so, come and join us at Hockey Academy.

October Camp 2009

This was our second camp of the year. As the first camp was a great success many of the children returned to the October camp. Needless to say we were delighted to welcome them back.

We had a good number of children who attended the camp and all of them work extremely hard all week on all the aspects of the game. We also had a great chance to work with some very small groups around 2-3 people and sometimes even 1-1, which I want to do a lot more as this helps the children learn and move on a lot quicker.

At the end of every day we had our daily challenges, which were back by popular demand from all the children, prizes were awarded daily for each of the winners of a specific task.

At the end of the week we had another special guest coach called Amy Brodie a current Scotland under 21 and senior women's player.

Amy ran a clinic for the whole of the day, which was a great success with the children even more so with the young girls we had attending the camp, Amy also joined in with our daily challenges and took on the children and won some of the challenges.

As always at the end of the week we had our Prize giving ceremony, however this one was particularly special as we had two Legends in their Sports presenting the prizes to the children.

We had Chris Sutherland a highly qualified coach in hockey from all around the world and also one of the best hockey players to have been produce in this country.

We also had Jackie McNamara Scotland international and Celtic legend present the prizes with Chris and this was a great honour not just for me and the coaching staff, but for all the children. This was also a great way to finish another great Hockey Academy Camp.

Summer Camp 2009 (Pilot)

This was the first ever Hockey Academy camp in the summer of 2009. We had a very good attendance, with a very good range of Hockey abilities ranging from youth internationals to beginners who had just started playing the game.

We had Michael Christie, a current Scotland senior player and Great Britain Youth internationalists coaching all week along with myself, my father and Neil Allan an ex international player himself and a highly influential coach in and around Edinburgh working with district squads and a national league team.

My father George Guy ran a successful goal keeping clinic all week working the Goal Keepers very hard with them asking for breaks very often, the keepers got a lot out of the week and learned a lot of basic skills and techniques. The children also got to "bash the goalie" as we like to say which all of the children enjoyed.

Myself, Michael and Neil took all the outfield players all week working on a very large range of technical skills and also talking about physical skills with the children as both aspects are very important in the modern game.

Michael spent a lot of his time working with the youngsters or his "superstars" as he called them. Neil and myself spent a lot of time working with the older girls and boys sometimes together and other times individually depending on what we were working on.

We were also happy to welcome Stephen Dick current Scotland senior player along with Michael and also current Great Britain player having played in the Beijing Olympic team.

Stephen was kind enough to come along and coach for the day and he ran a Clinic working on different aspects of the game and was also open to answer questions and give the children advice, everyone seemed to really enjoy this day in particular even me the rest of the coaching staff who were able to work with Stephen.

The camp ended with a prize giving ceremony highlighting different awards including most improved through the whole week and also the best stand out player for the week both awards had 3 different age groups, we also had a daily prize giving for our daily challenges which a lot different players won, but mainly Kyle Taylor.