ENGLAND & GB HOCKEY RENEW AGREEMENT WITH NOTTS SPORT AS OFFICIAL FACILITIES PARTNER UNTIL 2023

England Hockey & GB Hockey renew partnership with Notts Sport

Leading synthetic surfacing supplier Notts Sport will continue its ongoing support for hockey by extending its successful relationship with England & GB Hockey as the organisation’s Official Facilities Partner.

The renewed partnership, which will run until 2023, means Notts Sport continues their fantastic work, ensuring that clubs, schools and local authorities can deliver the best new and refurbished hockey facilities to help grow the game in communities up and down the country.

The announcement comes eight years after Notts Sport began working with England & GB Hockey, offering Facility Design, Advice & Funding opportunities. The extension of the partnership provides an emphatic endorsement of the quality of service the company provides.

As well as the renewal of the Official Facilities Partner of England & GB Hockey, Notts Sport are also proud to announce their continuation as Title Partner of the Schools Championships for Boys. Notts Sport has supported this event, which runs annually, to grow participation levels at schools around the country. In the extended partnership, the company will carry on working alongside the Facilities Team to award Club of the Year at our annual Awards Dinner plus supporting our Development Team in providing exceptional support to our Hockey Family across the country.

Notts Sport Managing Director Duncan Bennett says: “We are delighted to be renewing our partnership with England Hockey which began back in 2012 with an audit of various hockey pitches to support a wider piece of work the Facilities Team were working on at the time.  Almost a decade later, we have been fortunate enough to provide hundreds of clubs across England with valuable support, information and advice that assisted them with their hockey pitch schemes and as a result, delivered many projects. 

We are extremely excited to continue the relationship with England & GB Hockey because the changes we are seeing both in pitch and turf technology and for sport in general will drive innovation and improvements. Our partnership is a key relationship to Notts Sport, and we look forward to supporting the Hockey Family via new ways to educate and inform discussions around these changes and how we can all embrace the best options provided.”

England & GB Hockey CEO Nick Pink “We are delighted to have extended our partnership with Notts Sport through to 2023. The market-leading work they undertake with our clubs and schools is critical to the facility provision for hockey and the support they provide our initiatives. We look forward to working with Duncan and his team as hockey continues to make positive strides on and off the pitch.” 

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ENGLAND HOCKEY STAR PUTS NOTTS SPORT DESIGNED PITCH THROUGH ITS PACES AT LOCAL COLLEGE

England & Great Britain hockey star Sam Ward took time out from his preparations for the 2021 Olympics to host a special training session for school pupils – on an artificial turf pitch designed by leading synthetic surfacing supplier Notts Sport.

Sam Ward opening the new facility at Lutterworth College

The recently completed refurbished pitch at Lutterworth College was officially opened by Sam in October this year, giving the students some much-needed excitement and fun in this strange year.

The school recently upgraded their multi-sport pitch to a synthetic hockey pitch designed by Notts Sport to meet International Hockey Federation (FIH) National category field standard.

Sam delighted pupils with a special training session and game and was enthused to see pupils benefiting from such a fantastic facility, which he believes will help develop the sport in the local area. He said “It was amazing to go back to the Midlands to open the pitch at Lutterworth College. It is a fantastic school in which a high class facility like that can really bring the community together getting more people more active. The playing surface supplied by Notts Sport is incredible and hopefully will be used to create some stars of the future.”

Within just eight weeks, the school’s original Notts Sport multi-sport pitch – which had seen 15 years of intensive use – was given a state-of-the-art make-over, creating a top-notch facility for students and community users to enjoy.

Notts Sport channel partner Cleveland Land Services were contractors for the install, lifting and removing the existing carpet and shockpad, cleaning the macadam base before installing a brand new shockpad and sand dressed synthetic grass.

The £251k refurbishment project was carried out during lockdown and the summer holidays, meaning there was minimal disruption to the school.

Laura Kendrick, School Business Leader at Lutterworth College said, “Working with England Hockey’s Official Facility Partners Notts Sport, our old pitch was stripped and then resurfaced with a new shock pad and premium sand dressed surface compliant for multi-sport activities benefiting the whole sports curriculum and the wider community. Notts Sport made the process so easy, taking away the stress and giving us the confidence that we’d get just what we were looking for. A huge success all round!”

Sam Ward’s visit ended with a Q&A with the pupils where they learnt what it is like to be a professional athlete, the amount of training is involved to be one, his inspiration and the details of Sam’s worst injury he had received, the Olympic Qualifiers in 2019, when he was hit with a hockey ball and received 8 fractures to his face and lost his sight in his left eye.