Letchworth Roller Hockey Club Spotlight
This month Letchworth Roller Hockey Club are in the spotlight! If you’ve never heard of roller hockey, maybe this is the sport for you? Let’s celebrate this club and all that they do for girls’ sport.
What is Roller Hockey?
Roller hockey is a team sport played on traditional quad skates. Teams are allowed five players on the rink at one time: one goalkeeper and four outfield players. It’s a limited contact sport, played with a hockey stick and ball. In England, there are mixed teams with females and males playing alongside each other, throughout all the age groups.
Two teams, across two halves of game time, try to score into the opposing team’s goal. It is a very fast paced game that is lots of fun to play and exciting to watch. The game was invented in England in the 19th century with Charlie Chaplin possibly the most famous player known! Over time the sport spread throughout Europe and South America where it has become incredibly popular. Spain and Portugal are the most successful countries in the sport and have won the most world titles. Argentina are the current World Champions. Children in these countries are encouraged to skate from an early age and, in fact, over the years we have had a number of English players go and play in Spain, Portugal and other countries professionally.
LRHC successes
Letchworth Roller Hockey Club was established in 1984 and at one time was the largest club in the country! We have had many successes in this time. We’ve won Eastern Counties Leagues 36 times, Eastern Counties Cups 39 times and won the Premier League once. Across our history, 42 of our club players have represented England in Euros and World Championships. The club to this day has two ex-England players, one was an England Captain, as its Head Coaches.
A recent success would be one of our female players, Lily-Rose, being selected to represent England Under 17’s in the Euro Girls competition. This is the third time that Lily-Rose has been selected to play for England. The competition will take place in Switzerland in February. At the tournament England will play Switzerland, Germany, Italy and two Spanish teams.
Lily-Rose joined Letchworth Rink Hockey Club at the age of nine. During her time with Letchworth, she has played at all youth ages, now playing Senior Roller Hockey. Lily-Rose’s highlight of her career with LRHC so far was when her team won the Jubilee Cup and she was awarded Player of the tournament, a very proud moment for herself and also for the club.
Female participation success
At Letchworth Roller Hockey club we are committed to not only recruiting but also retaining female players. Our committee have attended specific courses to increase their understanding on how to do this and we stay up to date with relevant initiatives, as an example we see what works for other sports to develop female participation. We ensure females are represented and have a voice across our club as players, committee members, referees and coaches. We have recently recruited an ex-England female player to coach our younger players. Through this focus we have increased our female membership to 50% of our overall membership. We are incredibly proud to be part of the initiative ‘Play On’ through We are girls in Sport.