We all know the feeling before the start of a big event: butterflies swirling in your stomach, a rush of excitement, and then hopefully a wave of calmness. As for me, a member of the Canadian Women’s National Field Hockey Team, I am currently working my way through this series of emotions because the time of the big event is here. A culmination of three years of training has been leading up to this point and now, over the next two months my team will be competing to qualify for the 2016 Olympic games in Rio. While there are other major tournaments and events throughout a four year cycle, we all know that the Olympic games are the pinnacle event for amateur sport and one of the biggest hurdles is to simply qualify for the games as only twelve teams earn the right to compete on the Olympic stage every four years.
With a busy summer ahead the team has two chances to qualify for the Olympics. The first opportunity is through a series of tournaments dubbed ‘World League’. Our team has made it through the first two rounds of tournaments and now are set to compete in World League round 3 (semi-finals) June 10th-21st in Valencia, Spain. This tournament offers direct Olympic qualification to the top 3 placed teams in the tournament. Following World League, we will be competing in the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto which are held from July 10th-26th. The Pan American Games serve as our continental championship and therefore offer a single Olympic berth to the continental champion. Neither route will be easy, but then again the road to the Olympics never is and our team is prepared to rise to the challenge.
While many outsiders will look at our team currently ranked 20th in the world and look dubiously at our chances of qualifying, we have become accustomed to being viewed as underdogs and have learned to thrive in that position. Our youthful, emerging team possesses a quiet confidence and a deep seeded desire to become the team which gets Canada back to the Olympics – a feat which has not been achieved since 1992. Over the past couple of years we have played the majority of our games against opponents ranked in the top ten in order to challenge and test ourselves. With continual improvement, and some impressive results against top international teams, we are now at a place where we have learned we can not only compete with any team in the world, but get a result on any given day when we perform well.
Our confidence stems from the fact that individually and as a collective we have been relentless in our preparation. We have done everything possible to get us to a place where we can perform to our full ability and while many factors can affect the outcome of a game, there are only some which you can control. One of the lessons I’ve learned throughout my time in sport is to focus only on the things you can control, which eventually boils down to your effort in preparation and performance. Then regardless of the outcome, you can take pride in what you achieved knowing you did everything you possibly could. So if I could offer any advice it would be: No matter what your Olympics are, be it a 5km race, a Gran Fondo, or an Ironman – be honest in your training. That way when you step up to the start-line of your event you will feel that sense of calm knowing you can trust your preparation and perform to the best of your ability.
Happy training and competing!
Dani Hennig
Defender for Team Canada Field Hockey
Professional Training Coach
Innovative Fitness Kitsilano
www.InnovativeFitness.com
p.s. If you’re interested in keeping tabs on my team on our ‘Road to Rio’ feel free to check out the Field Hockey Canada website (www.fieldhockey.ca). Tournament/Game previews and recaps plus lots of other information around the team can be found there.
