Thursday 6 August 2026
Our U15 hockey boys spent the first five days of the term break upskilling themselves and taking their hockey to new heights.
The Saturday started with an annual match against Whangarei Boys High School. This fixture is now in its fourth year and the competition between both schools is fierce. Often our smaller boys struggle to come to terms with the size of the Whangarei players and this year was no exception. The scoreline, 2-1 to Whangarei was a fair reflection of the match and a reminder of what work needed to be done as we headed to Tanner Cup in Hamilton the following day.
Heading to St Paul’s Collegiate on the Sunday we had lofty expectations believing the basic technical ability of the entire group was higher than previous years.
Tanner Cup is a virtual Under-15 national schools tournament with the top 20 teams coming from all over the country. Our record at this event is very good in spite of our build-up, certainly not because of it. Our team, unlike most schools is made up of players coming from all of our five teams at school (Year 9, Year 10, Second XI’s and First XI) and our first match together is often the first match of the tournament.
Our results this year were very tight, losing and winning by only the odd goal. We shot ourselves in the foot on the first day going down to a Christs College team who ended up at the bottom of the tournament on the final day. This result doomed us to a ranking outside the top 8.
The U15 tournament is a sneak peak at opposition schools future talent. However, for King’s it is still very much centred on the development of individual talent. Coach Andrew Massey did a superb job in bringing together a group of smaller in stature athletes to most often out-play many of their bigger opponents.
The possession and scoring opportunity statistics in nearly every match was won by King’s. However, despite this possession we were found wanting in the scoring department considering the opportunities created.
With eight players still available for us at Tanner Cup next year the future looks very bright for the state of hockey at U15 level.
The results were ..
vs Christs College 3-4
vs Taupo-nui-a-Tui 1-2
vs Westlake BHS 2-1
vs Cambridge HS 2-2
vs Rotorua BHS 0-2
vs Wellington College 4-3
vs St Paul’s College 2-2