Helping add strength to last line of defence

THE Cairns Hockey Academy has consistently developed a number of talented field hockey players over the past few seasons.

This year the academy has turned its attention to goalkeepers. Some goalkeepers are often neglected or overlooked at training.

This is something we have been looking to change this season, putting 24 local goal- keepers from the Cairns Hockey Academy squad through specific skill and fitness sessions over the past five weeks.

The aim of the academy is to provide specialist, highquality training to upskill our current crop of keepers and also create more depth and competition for them in the goalkeeping stocks.

Athletes as young as nine have been learning the art of goalkeeping, while state masters keeper Bruce Cock (Saints) has been using the sessions to prepare himself for the Australian over-60s titles later this year. It has been fantastic to witness the development of all the keepers over the past five weeks.

The effort and intensity at all the sessions has been wonderful and I’m excited to see the keepers implement some of their new skills in their upcoming matches.

The goalkeeping academy was lucky enough to partner with local business FIT 360, who helped develop a goalkeeping-specific fitness program for the athletes.

The program focused on speed, agility, reactions and core strength.

The goalkeepers’ fitness results were recorded at the state-of-the-art training centre and we were all impressed with the significant improvement made over the course of the program. We are incredibly lucky to have such wonderful training facilities in Cairns.

With Cairns already boasting a proud history of producing some of the state’s finest shot-stoppers, I’m confident we will be seeing more elite keepers develop from the academy.

There are no fixtures over the Easter weekend. Senior fixtures resume on April 22.