ICC & JIC Week 1 wrap up

Week 1 of the Indoor Club Championships and Junior Indoor Challenge got underway on Friday night, with the Open Women’s Division 1 and Under 12 Junior Indoor Challenge.

Open Women’s Division 1

There was a total of 20 matches played across the three days at MSC Parkville, with 143 goals scored, with the leading goal scorer going to Jessica Brennan (Altona) for the 2^nd year in a row - scoring 20 goals across 7 games.

Altona Hockey Club finished top of Pool A and met Footscray (4^th Pool A) in Semi-Final 1, where Altona proved too strong winning 5-0 behind a hat-trick from Jessica Brennan. It was a tight showdown in Semi-Final 2 with Mentone and Waverley facing off. Waverley went up 2-0 early in the match behind impressive goals from Abbey Ryan and Bailey Wallace, before Mentone’s leading goal scorer Tegan Boucher reduced the deficit to 2-1 before half-time. Boucher then scored again for Mentone early in the 2^nd half goal to level it 2-2, which would prove to be the final, and see Mentone as the higher seeded team progress to the Goal Medal Match.

These two teams have been dominating the Indoor scene over the last 3 years, having met in the Gold Medal match in 2022 and 2023, with each team having won once. In the 3^rd instalment of this trilogy, it was Altona off to a hot start, as Jessica Brennan put her team up 2-0 at half-time, and then a 3^rd goal in the 20^th minute gave her another hat-trick, which was yet to be answered by Mentone. Mentone got on the board with a Boucher field goal in the 22^nd minute, but this was shortly answered by another Brennan goal for Altona, being her 4th of the match. A second goal by Boucher and a late goal by Jessie Dean for Mentone closed the gap to 4-3, but it was too little too late as the final buzzer sounded with Altona being crowned the 2024 Open Women’s Division 1 ICC Champions.

The final standings were as follows:

Thank you to Stuart Westmore for his time this weekend taking photos of the event!  Go visit @hockeyvictoriaofficial and @skwhockeypics on Instagram to see our players in action!

View the full photo album here.

Under 12 Mixed Junior Indoor Challenge

The Under 12 Mixed JIC was run on two indoor pitches at Monash University this year, with 20 teams participating across Saturday and Sunday.

A big day on Saturday saw each team play 3 matches in the first pool groups, for a total of 30 matches. As Sunday came around, questions regarding the forecasted heat casted doubt on play, but thanks to the efforts and resilience of our tournament staff, officials, team managers, and players, all matches went ahead as scheduled, seeing each team play 5 matches over the weekend!

It was great to see so many new officials participate in the U12 JIC this year, and a special thank you to our Umpire Managers, umpire coaches and team staff for assisting with the development of our officials.

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A huge thank you to all of the club administrators, team managers, coaches, players, officials and supporters that were involved in these events across the weekend!

To check out all of the results from the weekend, please use the following links:

Open Women’s Division 1 Competition

Under 12 Junior Indoor Challenge

A huge thank you to our dedicated officials for their tireless work across the weekend. These events truly would not have been possible without you all. A special mention to the following for their appointments:

Open Women’s 

Under 12 Mixed

The action continues this weekend (Feb 9, 10, 11) with the Open Division 2 Men’s & Women’s ICC, and Under 14 Mixed JIC events! Head to Altius and HV Website for fixtures & results, and be sure to keep an eye our social channels for updates.