Three members of Hockey Eire’s Recreation Changers Initiative travelled to Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium in the course of the 2026 FIH Hockey World Cup, to participate within the FIH Younger Athlete & Ambassadors Programme, showcasing revolutionary concepts geared toward making a stronger, extra inclusive and fascinating future for hockey.
The Younger Athlete & Ambassadors Programme offers a platform for rising leaders inside the hockey neighborhood to current mission concepts and contribute to the event of the game. Individuals participate in displays, discussions and collaborative classes, creating their management, communication and mission growth abilities whereas sharing concepts with friends from throughout the hockey world.
Representing Eire, Caoilin Dunne, Tom Simms and Ellie Andrew every submitted tasks and had the chance to current their concepts to their friends and a panel of FIH judges.
Caoilin Dunne – Bridging the Hole
Caoilin Dunne offered “Bridging the Hole: Supporting Ladies By Key Transitions”, a mission targeted on creating alternatives for women to remain energetic, linked and assured by means of hockey.
Caoilin recognized the numerous challenges going through women as they transfer by means of key phases of training and adolescence, with one in 5 Irish women dropping out of sport between main and secondary faculty and 49% dropping out throughout adolescence. Her mission seeks to sort out these drop-off factors by creating clearer pathways and stronger connections inside hockey.
Constructing on her work with Carry out Hockey Academy, which presently offers hockey in a supportive and unpressurised surroundings for greater than 200 women, Caoilin’s mission explores how digital instruments may assist bridge the hole between faculty, membership and college hockey. A key ingredient is the event of a web based platform the place gamers can discover golf equipment and alternatives to remain concerned in hockey, whether or not by means of enjoying, teaching, umpiring or supporting the game. The ambition is to make it simpler for women to stay linked to hockey, even when transferring to college, altering location or getting into a brand new stage of life.
Caoilin’s mission went on to be named the profitable mission on the programme, incomes the chance to work with FIH to develop the thought additional.
Tom Simms – FIH Songbird
Tom Simms offered “FIH Songbird”, a youth-led communications idea designed to make hockey simpler to grasp and interact with.
Tom’s mission recognises that hockey is a posh international system of federations, competitions, programmes, pathways and folks. Whereas the alternatives inside the sport are intensive, they aren’t all the time simple for people to grasp or navigate.
FIH Songbird proposes a youth-led communications crew that may join individuals inside FIH with the broader hockey neighborhood, starting with the questions that folks truly need answered.
The proposed pilot would deliver collectively younger individuals to determine necessary questions, join with the individuals inside FIH who can reply them, and create accessible long-form conversations that would then be developed into shorter movies, written solutions and FAQs.
At its coronary heart, Tom’s mission is about making a easy pathway from understanding to engagement, contribution and in the end development – serving to individuals see the place they match inside hockey and what they will do subsequent.
Ellie Andrew – Breaking Boundaries, Constructing Belonging
Ellie Andrew offered “Breaking Boundaries, Constructing Belonging”, an formidable proposal to develop Hockey4All throughout Ulster and create extra alternatives for younger individuals with disabilities to take part, progress and belong inside hockey.
Ellie highlighted the present hole in provision, with no common Hockey4All classes or golf equipment providing Hockey4All in Ulster, regardless of clear curiosity within the programme. Her imaginative and prescient is to construct a sustainable Hockey4All ecosystem connecting colleges, golf equipment, coaches, umpires, lecturers, volunteers, households and wider hockey communities.
The three-year mission would focus first on constructing, then rising, and in the end embedding Hockey4All inside Ulster Hockey. Plans embrace faculty outreach, hockey classes, coach and umpire training, pilot camps and competitions, stronger hyperlinks between colleges and golf equipment, and in the end embedding Hockey4All inside Ulster Hockey’s constructions.
Ellie’s ambition is straightforward however highly effective – to make hockey a sport the place each younger individual has the possibility to play, benefit from the recreation, discover their place and progress.
The participation of Caoilin, Tom and Ellie on the FIH Younger Athlete & Ambassadors Programme is a implausible reflection of the concepts, management and ambition rising by means of Hockey Eire’s Recreation Changers Initiative.
Their three tasks demonstrated three other ways of rising the sport – supporting women to stay concerned, making hockey extra accessible and comprehensible, and creating extra inclusive pathways for Hockey4All. Most significantly, all three confirmed what can occur when younger individuals are given the chance to determine challenges inside their sport and develop their very own concepts for change.
Congratulations to Caoilin, Tom and Ellie on representing Hockey Eire on the worldwide stage – and a particular congratulations to Caoilin on being chosen because the programme’s profitable tasks.
Hockey Eire
