One of our Year 8 hockey stars, Maya, has been selected to train at one of England Hockey’s Performance Centres, which are aimed at helping the best young talents in the sport develop into full international standard players. While we have several hockey players across both schools playing at a very high level, Maya is one of the first pupils from the Prep school to be selected to train with the national-standard players.
Head of Prep School Games and PE, Georgina Kingstone, said: “Maya will be playing and training with girls much older than her which will really help her to develop. Maya joined us from a school in Germany after speaking to a few of our current pupils, who were also playing for their country, at an England vs Germany hockey game. Maya asked them both where to go to school in England and they recommended the hockey set up at Framlingham College. Initially she’d only planned to be her for one year, but she’s really enjoyed it so she’s been here two years now and hopefully longer.”
This week has been an exceptionally special one for Maya’s 1st Prep school team who performed at the National Finals at Cheltenham College and came back with bronze medals. Prep school teams have been top three in the country for three consecutive years.
Mrs Kingstone continued: “We’re really proud of the continued excellence of our pupils in hockey and Maya’s story is another example of this. Last year I asked all the sports scholars to tell me their sporting idol, and we had all kinds of answers from professional sport. But Maya said her idol is Georgie, (a Year 13 pupil who’s playing with Team GB hockey). It’s brilliant that our excellence in the sport starts from a young age, and through our coaching from bottom to top, goes right through to Year 13.
Maya said: “Suffolk Hockey put me in for Performance Centre Trials and they said that I should just try it. That felt really special because I was just playing for Suffolk County. The coach that was training me at that time emailed my parents to say that I should try out. My parents were in Germany and I was here in the boarding house. When I called them that night my dad told me that I got selected for the Performance Centre and at the time I didn’t even know what it was. When my dad explained it to me I was so happy.
“When I came here from Germany originally, it was quite different because it’s a different language obviously but I settled in very quickly because of the great community here. On my first day, my buddy, Evie was showing me round and it was really nice because you could just see everyone on the field having fun in the sun. Even though it’s England, there are some sunny days!
“Within the school, I really look up to Georgie and Beth (other Framlingham College pupils) because their hockey flows so well. You can just see them running with ball and never getting tackled or anything! I had some coaching sessions with Georgie in the Easter holidays last year. It was really nice because I was staying at the College in Pembroke so having the opportunity to just go out to all these hockey sessions with different coaches, like Georgie, teaching me really helped my hockey improve.”
This month has also been a special one for Maya’s hockey coach and personal role model, Georgie, who is in Year 13. Georgie was selected to represent England Hockey in the U21 Junior Women’s World Cup in December.
We’d like to wish Georgie and Maya the best of luck as their fledgling hockey careers continue to go from strength to strength.
