Another big week of Indoor Club Championships has concluded

Week 2 of the Indoor Club Championships and Junior Indoor Challenge commenced on Friday night, with the Open Women’s Division 2 and Under 12 Junior Indoor Challenge.

Open Women’s Division 2

This year we saw only 5 teams compete in the Open Women’s Division 2. There was a total of 14 matches played across the three days at the State Netball Hockey Centre, with 87 goals scored, with the leading goal scorer going to Harriet Ochsenbein from Mentone Hockey with 8 goals.

With the top 4 teams from progressing into the Semi-Final matches, this year’s structure was a little different. The first semi-final saw second place PEGS Hockey Club 2 Maroon play off against third place Altona Hockey club; fourth place Mentone Hockey Club played off against PEGS Hockey Club 1 Blue who sat 5^th in the second semi-final. That meant first place Essendon Hockey was straight into the grand final.

In SF1, saw a very close scoreline that would end up resulting in a draw and the higher ranked team moving forward into the grand final. PEGS Hockey Club 2 Maroon Milla Conn ended the match scoring two out of the 3 goals with Isobel Skillern scoring the final goal. Bianca Anderson from Altona Hockey Club scored all three goals that would end up allowing the match to end in a draw.

SF2 saw the same number of goals as the first, but with a very different scoreline. PEGS Hockey Club 1 Blue played valiantly scoring the one goal from Lily Mortimer however would end up being defeated by Mentone Hockey Club 5-1. Mentone had three difference goal scorers with Emilia Kalling-Smith and Eliza Pettit scoring 1 goal apiece, with Harriet Ochsenbein coming in clutch and scoring a hat trick to take her team to the 3^rd lace playoff.

In the 3^rd place play-off, Altona Hockey Club took on Mentone Hockey Club. Again, a tight contest with Altona narrowly going down 3-4 to a strong Mentone team. Altona with 3 different goal scorers of Claudia Beamish, Kiani Howell, and Kayla Williams. Mentone Hockey Club saw Emilia Kalling-Smith add to her tally and again Harriet Ochsenbein becoming a goal scoring powerhouse with another hat trick!

The blockbuster grand final was a showdown between the two strongest teams, who in their last meeting saw Essendon come out on top 5-1. The Grand Final proved to be no different, with Essendon bring home the title with a 6-0 performance against a strong PEGS Hockey Club 2 Maroon. Essendon displace to the rules became the difference with only 1 green card to Ebony Giles whilst PEGS Hockey Club 2 Maroon where down a player for nearly a combined 20% of total match time with Leah Iosua receiving one green card, and two yellow cards. Essendon’s ability to score goals seemed to be stronger than ever with Madeleine Black, Zoe Klopak, and Lily Pelosi scoring two goals each for the final. This win saw Essendon Hockey claim a three-peat of Indoor Club Championships!

The final standings were as follows:

Under 12 Mixed Junior Indoor Challenge

The Under 12 Mixed JIC was run at Monash University, with a record 15 teams participating across Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday and Sunday morning saw each team play a series of pool matches in their first pool groups. Then on Sunday afternoon, teams were placed into subsequent pools based on their finishing positions in their original pool around. They played an extra two cross-over matches on Sunday to round of the weekend for a total of 38 matches. It was great to see our up-and-coming indoor players put on such a great display of hockey and comradery!

Thank you to all the officials that participated in the U12 JIC this year, and a special thank you to our Umpire Managers, umpire coaches and team staff for assisting with the development of these officials. A big thank you to all the parents, guardians, spectators, and supporters for helping set up and pack down the boards and goals at Monash! Without the additional help the set up and pack down would be a much harder job taking double if not triple the amount of time.

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A huge thank you to all of the club administrators, team managers, coaches, players, officials and supporters that were involved in these events across the weekend! We are so grateful for your support in running these events – it would not be possible without you.

To check out all of the results from the weekend, please use the following links:

Open Women’s Division 2 ICC

Under 12 Junior Indoor Challenge

Open Division 2

Under 14 Mixed

The action continues this weekend (Feb 14, 15, 16) with the Open Men & Under 18 ICC and Under 16 Mixed JIC events! Head to the HV Website for fixtures & results, and be sure to keep an eye our social channels for updates.