National Championships reaps rewards for wonderful WA efforts

The 2022 Hockey Australia Under-21s National Championships wrapped up with a historic day for WA hockey, with the men’s side claiming gold and the women’s taking home silver.

The WA men’s under-21s completed an unbeaten competition run, downing Victoria 2-1 in the gold medal match, including a stunning fight back to seal the victory.

Victoria opened the scoring early in the match, with WA’s many chances unable to result in a goal for the side.

WA went into the main break down 1-0, but a third-quarter surge led by the tournament’s top goal scorer and Player of the Tournament, Brodee Foster, resulted in two goals in quick succession in the 40^th and 42^nd minutes to claim the title.

The victory was met by strong celebrations, with a home crowd cheering hard for the black and gold.

“It feels unbelievable to be honest. To play a home tournament in front of a home crowd and claim the gold medal in a cracking game like that – I’m just lost for words,” Head Coach Tim Geers says.

“We obviously came home with a gold medal for the under-18s which was amazing and as a group we set a challenge to complete the double in front of a home crowd. You could see tonight the character from our group was special.

“We fought back which was a testament to sticking to our processes. The message to the group was that nothing needed to be changed and we needed to stick to our guns. We had a few efforts before we conceded and just weren’t able to capitalise in front of goal but we knew we were getting the chances and just had to make them count.”

In the women’s gold medal match, WA narrowly lost to Victoria with the game going to shootouts.

It was a stellar tournament run for the WA side, who beat the then top side in Queensland 2-1 in the semi-final.

WA headed into the last quarter 2-0, but showed courage and determination to fight back late in the piece.

Two clutch goals to Georgina Dowd and Nicole Enslin in the 54^th and 59^th minutes saw the two sides reach a thrilling shootout, but WA unfortunately suffered defeat, losing shootouts 3-1.

The two WA sides showed fight and class throughout the tournament’s tenure, with WA hockey fans excited for the future of hockey in the state.

Full competition scores here.