Otago Hockey U18 Regional Training Environment 2026

The U18 Representative program will follow 4 stages in 2026

Below is an outline of the U18 program we are putting in place to make sure we give our players every opportunity to perform on the national stage.

Stage 1

Training/ Upskill training sessions. These sessions will be run from the 17^th February – 31^st March. There would be a cost to this of $100.

This can be paid when registering at PlayHQ Click Here

Monday evening from 4.00pm – 5.30pm

Stage 2

Internal Game Play - the Highland Cup

• The plan is to identify players in the U18 age group to play in these games. The games would be played over 3 Sundays.
  • 26^th March (Thursday night)
    • Women 7.00pm – 8.00pm
      • Meet time 6.30pm
    • Men 8.00pm – 9.00pm
      • Meet time 7.30pm
    • 29^th March (Sunday afternoon)
      • Women 9.00am – 11.00am
        • Meet time 8.30am
      • Men 9.00am – 11.00am
        • Meet time 8.30am
      • To be considered for these games, ideally, we would encourage players to attend Stage 1 the training/Upskilling sessions.
      • Players who attend training/ upskilling will be offered this opportunity first.

Stage 3

External Game Play - the Wakatipu Shield

• We are scheduled to play teams from Southland and Central Otago over a weekend
  • 10^th May
• We will hopefully select two teams for this weekend in each gender.
• Teams will be selected from the Internal Game Play

Stage 4

Mainland Cup

• From the Wakatipu Shield teams we will be selecting the Mainland Cup squad to prepare for these games.
• There will be trainings for this squad starting the end of May.
  • Total of 3 trainings
• Mainland Cup is on Queen’s Birthday weekend 30^th 31^st May 1^st June

Tournament

5^th – 10^th July

• Men in Tauranga
• Women in Palmerston North

We are offering multi optional hockey sessions before the trial because:

Please note: The trial is the only event which is necessary to attend in order to be selected for the Otago U18 teams. The trainings (Phase 1) and the conditioning games (Phase 2) are not compulsory.