How do you design a Hockey pitch for a team full of International Players?

Designing a delivering a hockey pitch reconstruction for a leading hockey club where 12 International Hockey Players (including 11 Team GB players) play their home games was the challenge England Hockey’s Official Partners Notts Sport have just risen to at Holcombe Hockey Club in Kent.

With both the Mens and Womens First Teams playing and excelling in the National Premier League the project to rebuild the existing water based pitch at Holcombe involved a full design appraisal with players and management alike to ensure that the playing and technical characteristics met the standards of players such as Mens Team GB captain Barry Middleton and Team GB players such as Sam Quek, Emily Maguire and Nicola White amongst others.

As with all projects we work on, Notts Sport developed the bespoke design for the water based pitch specifically against Holcombe’s requirements, vision and feedback to a standard that meant the Club also decided to incorporate the resurface of the adjacent 2nd pitch using a sand dressed grass designed to match the performance of the water based pitch as closely as possible.

Following the 2 year development process (including detailed design meetings & consultation with players such as Barry Middleton and Richard Lane and Director of Hockey Jules Hall) the reconstruction project and resurfacing of the additional pitch was specified and tendered to a range of specialist hockey pitch contractors.  Following the competitive tendering process the contract for both pitches was awarded to S & C Slatter Ltd, chosen by the Club’s Project Team after a comprehensive tender appraisal and interview process.

Both pitches were completed over the summer ready for the start of the 2015/16 season and it is fantastic to see Holcombe’s teams flying high in their respective leagues. Now the pitches are over 2 months old we were delighted when some of the Holcombe players took time out from training to give us some feedback from an elite player perspective on their new Notts Sport pitch:

Written by Duncan Bennett, Managing Director.

With loving memories of Jack Patrick.

Over the weekend, Notts Sport lost one of its family with the untimely passing of our friend and colleague Jack Patrick, key member of our marketing team’s success in recent years and son of our Chairman Shaun Patrick.

Jack embodied everything that is good about Notts Sport and everything that life should be.  He was a hugely talented person in so many ways both in work and outside and in everything he did Jack did it with enthusiasm, humour, effervescence and, best of all, always in his own unique and original way coupled with a huge smile.  Jack was, and will always be, one of the best people you could ever wish to meet and those of us fortunate to know Jack will remember him with an unmeasurable amount of fondness.

We will all miss Jack hugely and hope that you will bear with us at this difficult time whilst our thoughts are with the Patrick Family.