Fiji and Zambia are newcomers to the hockey scene, while Japan has a long history on the global stage. But as the Hockey5 competition at the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games demonstrated, hockey is no exclusive club.
Lala Ravatu (pictured) is the Fiji captain. She started playing hockey in 2005 when she was nine years old, after watching her mother play. By the time she was 15, she was part of the Fijian national youth programme, training every day after school.
Lala’s first international tournament was the World League in India, in 2013, where she was the second youngest player. Of this experience, she says: “Playing in India was tough, it was so fast. But we played to our pace and we learnt a lot.”
Of the Youth Olympic Games, Lala says of the Fijian team: “Before we came, we hoped we would get a medal, unfortunately, we didn’t. But we improved in every game we played.”
The Fiji captain will now step up to the senior team but she says will miss the Hockey 5s format and its focus on fitness and speed. “I love to play 5s. You go out on attack, and then you have to come back to defend, you can’t stroll, everything is fast.”
When Loveness Mudenda from Zambia, started playing hockey, her team didn’t even own sticks, borrowing from the opposition. Three years on and the 14-year-old was the hat-trick hero in Zambia’s 6-1 win over Fiji to claim ninth place.
Loveness’s hockey aspirations have grown since Zambia qualified for the YOGs. “I hope we can do the same for the senior Olympics. We lost our pool games here, but we played well and we gained a lot of experience.”
“The other teams were very strong. Like China, for example, we didn’t expect them to play like that. But we learnt and it will help for the future.”
In the lead-up to the YOGs, the Zambian squad spent two months at a training camp. “We trained three times a day, every day,” says Loveness. “We had to compete very hard to be on the team, it’s only nine players in the squad, and there were a lot of girls to choose from.”
Japan performed well in Nanjing, the team made the semi-finals, losing out to the eventual winners China by a narrow 4-3 scoreline.
Kimika Hoshi is captain of the Japanese U18s female team, and she has her sights set on an even higher target. “I am looking forward to the Olympic Games coming to Tokyo in 2020,” she says. “I would love to be in the team. We hope the Tokyo Olympics will be an opportunity to showcase hockey to the Japanese people.”
Japan’s preparation took a battering from the weather, as Kimika explains: “We trained in all weather – rain, hail and snow. We were on the pitch literally in a typhoon. We only had nine days to train, three, three-day periods.
Like Loveness and Lala, Kimika says that the biggest difference between the 11-a-side game and Hockey 5s is the unrelenting pace. “It is really tiring, but there are so many opportunities to score goals, it is really fun as well.”
