Olympic star shares her golden dream with pupils
OLYMPIC gold medal hero Nicola White urged youngsters to shoot for their dreams when she visited Castleton Primary School.
Nicola, a key member of Team GB’s victorious hockey squad at the 2016 Rio games, dropped in to tell pupils all about her experiences and the glory of representing her country.
She also took questions from her enthralled audi- ence who asked her about all aspects of her life and training before putting the school’s hockey team through its paces.
One of the questions she was asked was ‘Which of the world’s teams were toughest to play?’.
She replied: “Holland is one of the hardest teams in the world to play, although we beat them, I believe we’d only done that once before.
“The other toughest are Australia and Argentina – those three together are the toughest and we beat them all.”
After the Q&A Nicola said: “I really enjoyed my time at Castleton and got such a warm welcome from everyone.
“They were really enthusiastic and wanted to know all about how I got into hockey and I told them my story.
“But I also wanted to tell them about how training your mind is as important as your body and that whatever you want to do, you can do it if you are motivated and want to succeed.”
Born in Shaw and raised in Littleborough, Nicola made her international debut for England in May 2009.
She was selected for the London 2012 Olympic squad where GB won bronze before going on to victory in Rio four years later.
Nicola began playing hockey aged seven and started her club career at Saddleworth Hockey Club.
She now plays for Leicester Ladies in the Premier Division and in 2013 completed a sports science degree at Loughborough College.
Her visit was organised by the school’s head of PE Dillan O’Connor and Dale Harris, of Dream Big Sports, a not-for-profit organisation which encourages youngsters to take up sport.
Dale said: “The kids have really enjoyed Nicola’s visit and the idea is to inspire them to go on and achieve their dreams.
“And you never know, one of them could go on to be the next Nicola White one day.”
●●Pictures by Sean Hansford