Katie skates her way into GB U16s’ squad
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THE Widnes Wild women’s team could soon boast another international player on their roster as Katie Fairclough has been offered a place in the Great Britain Women’s U16s’ squad after successfully negotiating the trials at Sheffield last autumn.
She will now attend a series of training camps with the other teenagers who have also been selected, with a view to playing in international tournaments, although details of these have yet to be announced.
Katie is the third Widnes Wild women’s player to be selected for Team GB, following in the footsteps of Leen de Decker who has played more than 60 world championship games for her native Belgium and Sophie SinclairReeks, who played for the GB U18s’ team at the World Championships in Poland last year.
Katie only started playing ice hockey in 2015 when she joined the women’s hockey basics course at Silver Blades Widnes before joining the Wild Academy juniors set-up.
Early last year she was invited to train with the Wild women’s senior team and, in the summer, was given special dispensation to play league matches with them for the 2017-18 season, despite being a year younger than the normally permitted age of 16.
She has played three matches so far and registered one assist.
However, this meteoric rise through the ice hockey ranks is only part of the story.
She actually learnt to skate on wheels first before taking to blades when she started going to sessions at Wigan Roller Rink with her sister Caroline back in 2012.
Katie got involved with the junior inline hockey training there – which subsequently moved to the purpose-built hockey rink at Atherton.
Since then, she has played for numerous inline teams at both her own age group and above and was selected to play for the U18 Junior Women Inline Hockey GB team at the 2016 FIRS World Inline Hockey Championships held in Asiago and Roana, in Italy.
Now in her third season of inline hockey, Katie signed for the U14 and U16 teams with the Blackhawks Junior inline team at Simply Skate in Rotherham and the season is part-way through.
She also tried out for both the Women’s Inline Hockey GB team again, who are going to compete in the World Skate Inline Hockey Championships in Italy this year and the World Roller Games in Barcelona in 2019 and has been accepted for both junior and senior teams. ● THE Widnes Wild women’s team have three away games in a row early this month and have their next home game on Sunday, February 25 when they play host to the Bracknell Firebees at Silver Blades Widnes. That game has a 5.30pm face-off.