EACH tournament takes star hockey player Kyah Gray closer to her goal of representing Australia at the Olympic Games.
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Next step in the process, for the Shoalhaven Heads resident, is February’s Indoor World Cup where she will play for the Australian Women’s team.
An eye-catching effort for the winning NSW team at last year’s national indoor titles got her selection in the Australian team to play in the World Cup.
She is looking forward to not only reuniting with some of her NSW team-mates but also some players from the other states and territories.
Interstate rivalry is dropped once they put on the Aussie colours.
“I have toured with some of the girls before and we all get on well,” she said
The Australian team goes into the competition as the underdogs.
Australian is rated the number nine team in the world and Gray expects some of the strong European teams (the Netherlands and Germany) to be hard to beat.
Indoor hockey is played professionally in Europe and therefore the European teams are the one to beat.
The local star, with unlimited interchange, expects to get a lot of game time and Gray, at 20-years-of-age, is the youngest player in the Australian squad.
The team leaves Australia on January 13, arrives in Brussels on January 15.
In Brussels they will train and play a tri-nations tournament against Belgium and France.
On January 19 they will go to Utrecht to train and play games the Netherlands.
Then they head to Mannheim on January 24 for a training camp and play matches against South Africa.
On January 30 the team arrives in Leipzig where they will train and prepare for the World Cup.
The World Cup is played in Leipzig from February 4 to 9.
Gray is proud to represent Australia in indoor hockey but her goal is to play in a future Olympic Games.
“Deep down I know I have to ability to make the Australia Olympic team,” she said.
To chase her Olympic goal she may have to stop playing indoor hockey.
“At this stage I am managing both indoor and outdoor hockey,” she said.
Meanwhile, no matter where her career takes her gray’s love of her home village, Shoalhaven Heads, will always run deep.
She talks about growing up and training in the village with fondness.
“I spent hours going up and down the cricket pitch dribbling the ball on Zealand Oval,” she said.
Many Shoalhaven Heads residents still keenly follow her career.
