This season Henley Hockey Academy had 30 nominated players taking part in the Berkshire and Oxfordshire Development Centres - to try to earn selection to the county squads.

Nominating a player for the Centres is always a tricky balance to strike - between assessing ability, fitness, potential, commitment, maturity and the enormous workload on children outside of hockey to name but a few of the considerations. As the Academy section of Henley Hockey Club, we offer a great opportunity for talented youngsters to develop in to excellent players - supported by early introduction in to opportunities to play senior hockey. We acknowledge however that the timing needs to be right to introduce a player to the County structure.

This County selection process has involved the nominated players working at a high intensity at additional training and selection sessions, under the guidance of county coaches, between September and December.

We are delighted to confirm that 22 of the players Henley nominated have been selected into the county squads. We have representation at both Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and have players in every age group from under 13 up to under 17. The hard work is only just beginning for these players as their county squad training commences this month. We congratulate all of those who made the cut.

For those players who were not successful this time, we encourage them to use the experience wisely, keep training hard, re-set and go again - everyone develops at different speeds and next season might be even better.

This is such an exciting time to be involved in hockey at Henley. The success of the Academy is built on the huge amount of effort from the wonderful coaches we have and the time they put in to working with and understanding each individual player. With record numbers now training in our younger age groups, we think there’s a bright future ahead.