England Hockey’s Expertise crew launched Venture 2011 designed to extend alternatives for a wider group of younger individuals to entry a performance-aligned surroundings.
A complete of 38 gamers have been nominated for the 2011 consumption and have been supplied elevated probabilities to enhance their hockey together with a visit to compete in opposition to established hockey groups from internationally.
For England Hockey’s Expertise Partnerships Supervisor, Mark Nicholls, one factor that stood out for him is the idea that gamers inbuilt themselves.
Venture 2011 emerged from an ambition throughout the England Hockey Expertise Crew to widen entry to excessive‑high quality expertise growth experiences.
Traditionally, youthful gamers, notably these from state‑funded schooling, have had fewer alternatives to entry specialist teaching, structured technical growth, and worldwide publicity.
In 2024/25, the Expertise Crew developed the DiSE and England Age Group programmes to run joint Expertise HUB days throughout six venues. This created a scalable, technically targeted surroundings able to supporting a broader vary of ages and maturities.
The construction supplied a pure alternative to introduce a youthful cohort (gamers born in 2011) right into a excessive‑high quality coaching house that they might not in any other case attain by means of membership hockey alone.
How It Is Working
Venture 2011 operates by integrating a bunch of Expertise Academy nominated, state‑faculty‑educated 2011‑born gamers into the present Expertise HUB construction.
The programme consists of:
Seven Expertise HUB days throughout the season, delivered in a technically targeted surroundings
A event expertise within the Netherlands, providing worldwide publicity
Supplementation of ladies’ squads with a small variety of England U16 gamers, offering management, high quality, and aggressive stretch
Alignment with Expertise Academy nominations, making certain gamers are already engaged in structured growth
A versatile, maturity‑delicate coaching mannequin, recognising the bodily and developmental variations inside this age group
This method permits youthful gamers to coach alongside barely older or extra skilled athletes in a setting that prioritises talent acquisition, confidence constructing, and lengthy‑time period growth over early choice stress.
At first of April, 36 athletes travelled to Netherlands to expertise a camp the place they have been competing as a crew for the primary time. They have been supported by coaches and developed important abilities that can assist them of their hockey journey.
Mark Nicholls, England Hockey Expertise Partnerships Supervisor, travelled with the squad and explains the advantages that everybody skilled.
“The camp and the worldwide event weren’t only a good addition to the programme — they have been central to the aim of rising a extra various expertise pool,” Nicholls mentioned.
“You’ll be able to inform a younger participant they’ve expertise, however till you set them in an surroundings that genuinely checks and stretches them, that message solely goes thus far. Lilleshall gave them the setting, a nationwide efficiency surroundings that alerts instantly that that is severe, that they’re severe.
“However the event within the Netherlands took it to up a step. Competing internationally, carrying a badge, in opposition to robust European opposition, that’s once you discover out what gamers are actually product of. It additionally gave our coaches the clearest doable image of who might step up. You merely can’t replicate that in a coaching domestically.
“Our focus was on creating the circumstances for the gamers to develop and specific themselves, to showcase their potential, free from the stress of outcomes or the expectations of their regular surroundings. We needed them to take possession of their very own efficiency. The teaching crew had a transparent construction, technical (and tactical) classes, high-intensity aggressive play, time to mirror, however inside that, we intentionally gave the gamers house to guide.
“We requested them to problem-solve collectively on the pitch, to speak, to make choices beneath stress. The plan wasn’t to teach them right into a system in a number of days. It was to point out them who they might be after they’re trusted, challenged, and surrounded by others who share their ardour and starvation.
“Two issues stood out for me. The primary is perception. Many of those gamers had by no means been in a nationwide efficiency surroundings earlier than. Most had by no means performed at worldwide stage. Strolling into Lilleshall, lining up in opposition to European opposition, that modifications one thing in a younger athlete. It raises the ceiling of what they suppose is feasible for themselves.
“The second is perspective. They skilled and competed alongside gamers from totally different backgrounds and golf equipment, all chosen on one foundation alone: potential. That peer group is one thing they’ll carry lengthy after the event is over. Each day, each recreation, each quarter you would see the gamers development and development. The stress, depth, high quality of teaching, opposition and one thing particular in every particular person participant drove that accelerated growth
“I hope what they take away most is the data that they will belong at this stage, that their background, their faculty, their entry to services to this point, hasn’t held them again from being precisely the sort of participant England Hockey desires to develop.
“For a few of them, it will have been the primary time anybody at a nationwide stage has mentioned: we see you, and you’ve got the potential. That’s not a small factor. Past that, I believe they’ll take away a regular, an understanding of what’s anticipated of them technically, bodily, and by way of perspective, in the event that they wish to progress. That benchmark will drive them.
“What I wish to be clear about is that Venture 2011 doesn’t finish right here. We can be operating the venture once more, and we’ll hold discovering these gamers. Those who got here by means of this time are a part of one thing larger, they’re proof that the mannequin works, they usually have a task in inspiring the following cohort of gamers who, proper now, won’t but consider that is for them.”
