NEARLY 100 young players contributed to a Border hockey clean sweep at the Victorian Junior Country Championships in Melbourne.
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Hockey Albury-Wodonga won the under-13, 15 and 17 boys and girls finals to claim six gold medals on Sunday.
A second under-13 boys side, a development squad, also finished runner-up in its pool for a silver medal.
I would have been happy to come away with four of our teams making finals out of the seven, but I had a feeling that we would do much better than that.
- Karen Nelson
As well as the 91 squad members, seven other players filled in for the Goulburn Valley association throughout the age groups.
Held in three venues at Parkville, Greensborough and Footscray, the championships included teams from Sunraysia, Wimmera, West Gippsland, East Gippsland and Warrnambool.
Hockey Albury-Wodonga junior representative co-ordinator Karen Nelson said the Border sides made an impression over the two-day event.
“We just stood out, everyone was making comments about the standard of play,” she said.
“I had a Victorian under-18 selector, he’s the coach of the under-18 girls, come up to me and tell me how good our 17 girls team was.”
The association had held selection trials from which squads of 12 to 14 players were chosen and then trained together for a couple of weeks.
“I would have been happy to come away with four of our teams making finals out of the seven, but I had a feeling that we would do much better than that,” Nelson said.
“We do a lot of development with our kids, so we also did academies over the summer months.
“So a lot of our children doing representative continued to play and develop their skills.”
The grand final winning scores were 13 boys A side 3-0, 13 girls 2-0, 15 boys 1-0, 15 girls 4-0, 17 boys 1-0 and 17 girls 1-0.
Nelson said none of the finals were easy.
“Once you get into a final, the head game gets to play,” she said. “Sometimes you can win all weekend and then lose the final, just through the stresses.”
Hockey Albury-Wodonga and Goulburn Valley will now join together to form the North East Knights for the Victorian junior championships, with teams due to be announced this week.
“North East Knights have picked up medals in the past few years with them, so we’re hopeful that we’ll bring home some more of the silverware, well, actually goldware, in a month’s time,” Nelson said.
