Summer recap and update on changes in HP Environment
After over two summers of the COVID pandemic cancelling, postponing, and sidelining international travel and competition, 2022 saw an uptick in travel and tournaments at all levels. Field Hockey Canada celebrates success at the top tournaments and turns an eye to the future.
Senior National Teams back in full swing
The Women’s National Team, with their third-place finish at the 2022 Pan American Cup in Santiago back in January, successfully qualified for the 2022 World Cup. The FIH Women’s Hockey World Cup took place in Spain and Netherlands with Canada playing the hosts, Spain in the tournament opener. This was the first time in 28 years that the Women’s National Team had played in the World Cup. Their competitive results, despite going winless, showed that the team belongs at that tournament and will be challenging for an upcoming Olympic bid as they now turn a focus to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Later in the summer, the women’s team were joined in Europe by the Men’s National Teams as they both played in the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, UK. The Men’s National Team integrated many new players in Birmingham, giving the team a fresh feel compared to the last 5-10 years. This new-look squad tied our MNT’s 2018’s finish, coming in eighth place. In the women’s competition, the Wolf Pack narrowly missed out on the semifinals before finishing on a high with a win against Scotland in the fifth-place game. This tying their highest result at a Commonwealth Games – and indeed the highest placement of any Canadian team in this competition.
Both teams will now be playing in a fall/winter Nations Cup tournament. The men will be off to South Africa in November and the women will be traveling to Valencia in December. That will wrap up their 2022 campaign as they will turn the corner looking forward to qualification tournaments in 2023.
With the reset following this major competitive period (Men following the 2021 Olympics and Women finishing their WC campaign), comes high performance changes. Rob Short, Women’s Head Coach, has stepped down from leading our WNT to focus on his young family. Field Hockey Canada thanks Rob for heading the ship for the last year and pushing this team to new heights. The Field Hockey Canada high-performance team would like to thank Rob for leading the team through a historic period and appreciates the work Rob put into the women’s program.
With interim Men’s Head Coach, Peter Milkovich having completed his short-term contract, Field Hockey Canada’s High-Performance leadership is currently completing the appointment process for the long-term appointments to lead both the Men’s and Women’s programs towards Paris 2024 and LA 2028.
JUNIOR and NEXTGEN PIPELINE
Jenn Beagan has held multiple roles inside both the organization and the greater system over the last several years including Coach Education lead, National Junior Assistant and Head Coach and FHC True Sport manager. She will make the jump to lead NextGen programming as the NextGen Director of both the Men’s and Women’s program. Beagan’s experience within the system, including in coach education will be critical to her role in strengthening the NextGen program which is targeted at developing athletes considered to be 5-8 years out from podium performances. In aligning this leadership, FHC builds the strong high-performance spine, with Alan Brahmst as a high-performance consultant and Emma Bray as Director of Operations providing the key leadership for our HP set up. One final appointment within this spine, that of Pathway Manager to be announced soon.
Field Hockey Canada CEO, Susan Ahrens, said that with this aligned leadership within NextGen, Field Hockey Canada is creating system alignment, gender equality and systemic efficiencies that will serve our system and community for the future.
“Field Hockey Canada is delighted to have secured Jenn Beagan in this new role. Growing our people within our system is important to us,” Ahrens said. “Jenn brings enormous experience to this role, firstly as a NCAA and junior national athlete before building her coaching portfolio over a number of years, mostly recently as Head Coach at the Junior World Cup. An outstanding administrator, Jenn’s background is ideal for this role as she will build NG into a leading HP environment across the country,” she said.
Following the Men’s Junior World Cup last year, Head Coach Indy Sehmbi’s leadership passed on to his long-serving Assistant Coach Geoff Matthews. Sehmbi has led the program through three junior cycles and Field Hockey Canada thanks him for his incredible work with this age group. In stepping up from Assistant Coach, Geoff Matthews brings his long system experience to the U21 Junior Men and will ensure continued success of this program.
Looking to the future
With this high-performance build-out, FHC has an eye firmly on the future, looking to Paris 2024 and senior World Cups in the years following as key milestones. The Junior World Cup cycle feeds the senior success and with aligned NextGen leadership, junior success will lead to senior success and beyond. The long-term focus of institutional stability and growth is a priority and will be achieved through system transformation and pathway strengthening.
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