Hockey Victoria Indoor Club Championships

Hockey Victoria has scheduled four weekend indoor hockey tournaments over Feb-March this year. It's the result of immense work undertaken behind the scenes and we're extremely grateful to Ben Seccull, Hockey Victoria Operations Manager, and his team of tournament officials for working tirelessly with the venues (Monash Uni and Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre) and government agencies to pull this off.

TEM is fielding 8 teams with a mix of developing and players, about 90 players, coaches and managers. Some players are friends from other clubs, its great to be able to welcome everyone and we're super excited to be building such an awesome community.

I'd like to thank everyone involved for your support and doing your best to make this happen in challenging circumstances. By far the biggest hit caused by COVID-19 restrictions has been the no-spectator policy set by the venues and we know how hard this has been for families and supporters.

Later this year, the new State Netball and Hockey Centre will be open with state of the art indoor hockey facilities. We're looking forward to the opportunities this will bring, to play and train and for even more players to become involved.

All age groups have now played their tournaments except for the U13s which was postponed due to the recent lockdown. They have been re-scheduled for 13-14 March.

Go to "Photo Gallery" for pics from the tournaments that have been completed (Open Men, Open Women and U15 Girls). Here are their reports, thanks to Cam, Matt and Claire!

Open Women (Claire Douglas)

Playing our first game as a team against a very accomplished Mentone side did not dampen our spirits. A tough draw on the first day resulted in two losses and a win, unfortunately leaving us out of contention for the final. On Sunday, we came out firing in our first game against PEGS, putting together our best hockey for the weekend. With a few hours between our first and second game, there were many TEM players seen hobbling around Monash, very very sore from our previous four games. Nevertheless, patches of our final game mimicked that of a national team though we lost in a very close game to KBH. All in all, a very positive weekend for the TEM ladies to bring us into the outdoor season. Shout out to Sam Arch for coaching and Miranda Ellis for managing - your support was much appreciated!

Open Men (Cam McKenzie, Captain)

A small group of players represented TEM in the Open Men’s Indoor Club Championships for 2021 in early February. What the group lacked in numbers was more than made up for in skill from the players, coaches and team managers. Steve Willer, coach of the Australian Indoor Men’s team, generously gave his time acting as coach. His expertise was more than reflected in the results obtained by the group over the weekend. Furthermore, our team possessed an amazing amount of on-field talent, such as striker Ola Marshall, who ended up being the top goal scorer of the entire tournament with 11 goals. It was also great to see other members of the TEM community willing to help out when the team needed it. Both Pat Cassidy and Matt Sweetnam filled in for games, and Pip Dudley did an amazing job managing what was a very disorganised group of young men. As for the tournament itself, unfortunately our team was inescapably hindered by our only loss to the future winners of the tournament in the first game. However, after this 3-1 defeat to Waverley we only saw success, winning against Knox 8-0, Doncaster 6-2, Essendon 4-1 and KBH 5-0. Overall, we finished 3rd and the Men’s team should be extremely proud of themselves for achieving such an impressive result. Big thanks to everyone involved both on and off the field.

U15 Girls (Matt Hooper, Coach)

We had a very strong start against Camberwell 11-1 then got a tough match from Doncaster 6-2 . Our final round match against PEGS was a 12-0 win but the coach wasn't happy and did tell the girls. I was happy with the response in the semi against Waverley winning 8-1 with a very strong second half. Onto the final which was a tough opening half but once we cracked Powerhouse open and got a 3 goal buffer we were never challenged. Final result winning the tournament 6-3! Thanks to the parents for dropping off kids and my super manager Shabu Thomas and assistant for the weekend Phil Grey.

U18

The U18 Championships were played over the weekend and we had two girls teams and one boys teams entered. The girls TEM Blue team played a fantastic tournament and made it through to the Grand Final match. Unfortunately they went down to Waverley 5-0. The girls TEM Red team came 5th overall and the boys came 3rd which was an awesome effort. Well done to everyone involved in all the teams over the weekend.