Dear Players, Parents and Supporters,

I write to you as the dust settles after another busy, successful and, most importantly, fun school hockey season here at RGS.

This goes out after our U14A’s get back from the National State School Championships and the official end of the school hockey season. As always, I feel grateful and proud of all players, coaches and all the stakeholders who have a role to play in getting students out on the hockey pitch and enjoying school sport.

At the Annual Hockey Awards on Thursday 2 May, we had an opportunity to come together for an informal evening of food and socialising to celebrate all players involved in hockey this year. Thank you to everyone who attended and made it such an enjoyable event and congratulations to all the award winners.

Highlights include having two Year 7 teams coming 1st and 2nd in the U12 Bucks minis competition, our two U14 teams coming 2nd and 3rd at the South-Central tournament with the National Round  yet to come and our Seniors winning the Bucks Super 6’s in its inaugural year. In addition to this, our U14A’s came 2nd in the National Bowl at the top tier of National State School championships, showing how far they have come across the year, and our U16’s went on a promising cup run including good wins against Merchant Taylors’ School and Eton College.

As we come to the end of another successful season, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their hard work and commitment to representing the school. It has been a great pleasure to work with our teams and we are proud of each and every one of our players.

Team Photos

All team photos are available to purchase from School Sports Photography. The U14 and U16 photos will be taken on Weds 19 June and uploaded to the online gallery shortly afterwards.

Coaching

We continue to be hugely blessed in the teaching staff at RGS who are happy to dedicate their time, energy and considerable experience to the school’s hockey squads. This came in particularly useful when the Head of Hockey displayed particularly poor planning and went off on paternity leave mid-way through the hockey season.

We are aware that there was a higher than both usual and desired amount of training sessions cancelled due to pitch clashes with fixtures which caused understandable frustration. While this is in part a symptom of only having one pitch, with lots of teams and games to fit in, and this year specifically a by-product of teams doing well in their respective cup competitions and having more last-minute games to fit in, it is something we are looking at strategies to remedy going forward.

Regional Representation

My congratulations go out to all our students who have played representative hockey this year, from those in the Bucks/Oxon squads, to those playing at Reading, Hawks and Hampstead & Westminster Talent Academies and the DiCE programme.

Club Links

We are lucky to have a number of clubs with strong junior sections within easy reach, and a number of our senior players have made great contributions at adult club level as well as U18.

We also have have many boys represent Reading, Marlow, Maidenhead and Amersham & Chalfont and all of these clubs have a strong tradition of developing junior players throughout club hockey of all levels.  

Remember, if your son is interested in joining a hockey club outside of school, please feel free to have him talk to his hockey coach who would be happy to point him in the right direction.

And Finally

My last mention, as always goes to our Year 13 leavers. We played a Leavers XI vs an RGS Invitational XI made up of staff and old boys in the evening before the Hockey Awards. The boys put up a good show coming away with a 4-2 victory, although we were all left scratching our heads when 3 of the leaver's goals were scored by the 1XI goalkeeper.

They have made a fantastic contribution to school sport across their seven years with us, and certainly leave the shirt in a better place than when they found it. While displaying a great desire to improve and at times showing themselves to be capable of playing outstanding hockey, they will be missed just as much for their sense of humour and the sheer pleasure it was to work with them throughout their time here. We wish them all the best in their future endeavours, and I look forward to hearing where their hockey journey takes them next. 

Support

We are rightfully proud of our hockey provision, but it couldn’t be done without the generous support of parents and guardians whose contributions allow us to support and provide more for our players than we would otherwise be able to do.

As well as coaching, tournament entry and travel, monies raised through Hockey Membership and fundraising events this year have paid for the replenishment of our Penalty Corner safety equipment (masks and gloves), a new set of Goalkeeper pads which are always in demand, as well as a restock of new hockey sticks to ensure that hockey remains a sport everyone can have a go at, regardless if they have their own equipment or not.

If you haven’t already paid your membership fee, please go to ParentPay, look up Hockey Membership 2024 and make the £100 payment.

Thank you for all your support this season.

Sam Clark
Head of Hockey
szc@rgshw.com

Events

26 April 2025 – Bat Oar Ball
Our annual black-tie event with dinner and dancing raises important funds for all sixteen sports at RGS. Tickets will be available from Little Box Office in the Autumn Term.

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Keep up to date with all our fixtures on SOCS.