2021 Under-18 Women's Teams

2021 Representative Policy

Click here to read the 2021 CHA Representative Policy

One of the small additions to the 2021 Representative Policy is the Under 18 Player Eligibility Criteria.

Under 18 teams - Players being considered must be under the age of 18 as of January 1 in the year being considered and must also be 15 or over as of January 1 of the year in which the tournament is played. They must also be registered participants of Canterbury Hockey who live or school within the Associations boundaries and be eligible through Hockey New Zealand’s National U18 rules. Players who do not live or school within the Association boundaries but are registered participants of Canterbury Hockey will only be eligible for selection if there is a Memorandum of Understanding in place between Canterbury Hockey and the Association they are living and/or schooling in, following mutual agreement between the respective Association of the benefits it provides for the individual participant and both Association’s participants in general.

Reasoning:

There is concern that players who are living and attending a school in another association can register and play for a club in Christchurch and therefore make themselves eligible for Canterbury U18 representative teams.

• This creates an issue for neighbouring associations who could potentially loose a number of secondary school players from their local club competition and U18 representative program.
• Despite creating a deeper talent pool for Canterbury Hockey U18 teams, it will reduce the number of opportunities available to Canterbury based players.
• A main driver around removing regional teams in the U18 age group was to reduce travel and to encourage school students to stay and play in their home association.
• We believe this goes against Sport NZ’s Balance is Better messaging as it promotes excessive travel - which reduces recovery opportunities and impacts other areas of the athlete’s life and wellbeing.