Six of the Goulburn players were recently named in the NSW Under 13s squads from which the NSW Team is selected.

Last weekend Makayla Jones, Georgie Smithers and Madelyn Croker attended trials at the Macarthur Fields, Narellan to determine who will make the NSW Under 13s Girls team.

Next Sunday Dylan Gray, Fletcher Craig and Danny Nicholls will head to the Moorebank Hockey Complex for their elimination trials that whittle the 45 players down to 32.

Naomi Jones has been coaching the girls’ rep players to develop their skills to the higher level needed in state and national competition.

Nick Craig has been the main coach for the representative boys aided by Steve Downey and Anthony Skelly.

Also working with all the coaches and players has been the NSW Regional Coaching Coordinator Ben Senior.

Madelyn Jones said it has been hard this season fitting in training on the one field, with the western field out of action because of the damage done to it by the corellas.

“We are thankful for the time and effort put in by our coaches in developing our skills but it is frustrating not being able to use the full fields sometimes because other people and players are also training,” she said.

Fletcher Craig said that without the support of their parents the players would not have been able to travel to the various competitions and selection trials.

“Our parents put in lots of time and money taking us to training and driving us to the competitions and trials at other hockey centres. 

Sometimes hours away from Goulburn,” he said.

“Without the support of our parents we would not be able to follow our hockey dreams of representing NSW and maybe one day playing for Australia.

Makayla said that the coaching staff have been very dedicated to helping them pursue their dreams.

“We are inspired by many hockey players of the past from our association or from Crookwell, who represented Australia, as well as Emily Smith, Glenn Turner and Laura Gray who are currently in Australian representative teams,” Makayla said. 

“We want to follow in their footsteps and keep honour of representing Australia in hockey going but we need to get our fields up to standard so we can train and play in conditions similar to what we play on in our representative competitions.”

Dylan Gray started playing hockey when he was about 9 or 10 years old which was a little later than most of the other representative players but in the last 18 months or so the 13 year old’s skills have flourished with representative opportunities coming his way with the South Coast PSSA side and Goulburn representative teams.

Dylan said he is inspired by Glenn Turner and other members of the Australian Kookaburras as well as the Goulburn Association’s Capital League players. 

He would like to see how far he can go with his representative playing in whatever position the coaches consider he plays in best.

At club level he plays for Fireflys where he has plenty of experienced players to look up to.

Madalyn Jones is 12 years old and plays for Taralga Hockey Club, she mostly plays in the midfield but on the right in a more defensive role. 

Last year she played for the South Coast and achieved PSSA representative honours. 

Madelyn was an early starter in hockey, playing minkey as soon as she could hold a hockey stick. 

Her main inspiration is Laura Gray who is in the Under 23 Jillaroos or Casey Sablowski from Wollongong who was recently named in the Hockeyroos Olympic team.

Players who make the NSW Under 13s Teams will play in the national competition in about six weeks time in Perth.