Polding Girls Hockey
The 2025 Maitland / Newcastle girl’s hockey contingent was delightful, with all team members continuing to highlight their skills, teamwork and sportsmanship throughout the Polding Winter Trials. During games, the girls continued to improve, holding their elected positions passing and receiving with developing skills accuracy. Defenders held the attacking teams out of the circle ensuring that there were few short corners awarded. Attacking players, created some scoring opportunities throughout the games, with some extremely close near misses. Coach Heather Porter Kaye was very proud of how welcoming and inclusive the Maitland Newcastle team was with the Broken Bay players. Six of our eleven players participated in the ‘Possibles and Probable’ match. Congratulations to Frankie Grushka from St Joseph’s Charlestown & Eleanor Healy from St Joseph’s Wingham who were both chosen in the Polding team. A special mention and heartfelt thank you to Summer Griffiths for staying on the field as goalie for all teams. She played every match throughout the day!
Players included in the Possible / Probable match were Bridie Anderson, Parker Christian, Summer Griffiths, Frankie Gruschka, Eleanor Healy and Andrea Pilley.
Boys Hockey
The Maitland Newcastle team combined with Bathurst players and were strong on field all day. The boys were rewarded with 4 players making possibles and probable:
Jonathon Buckett, St Michael’s Nelson Bay
Banjamin Cashman, St Therese’s New Lambton
Harvey Deveridge, Corpus Christi Waratah
Elijah O’Brien, Corpus Christi Waratah.
Congratulations to Jonathon Buckett for being named in the Polding team.
Referees
It was a family affair for some students at the Polding Hockey trials. Summer Griffiths from St Brigid’s Raymond Terrace was playing, her brother, Oscar, at CMCC, was asked by CSNSW Sport to Umpire and Summer’s sister, Kendall, also at CMCC, was busy timekeeping, and chasing hockey balls for the MN team.
