Park House Sports Award Holder Raphael Boulanger recently competed in the England Hockey National Indoor U16 Club Finals which took place in Wolverhampton. To qualify for the Nationals, during the Christmas holiday Raphael captained his club team through the regional competition to become South Champions, finishing first of eleven teams. In the two-day National Finals event, Raphael’s team won their pool undefeated but narrowly lost their semi-final. There was no bronze medal match but the team had to beat the other semi-finalist in the pool stage, effectively coming third in a national competition that started with 50 teams.
Raphael was also recently selected to be part of England Hockey’s new Performance Centres for outdoor hockey which started this month. The Centres are designed to provide frequent, high quality training with the best coaches for U15 to U17 players. The Centres train some of the top players in the country including those with the ability and aspiration to eventually play international hockey.
While he has been to four club national finals in outdoor hockey with Guildford Hockey Club, Raphael’s first ever experience of indoor hockey was with Director of Hockey, Dan Fox, hosted at Charterhouse in Oration Quarter 2016. He has built on this experience in the recent clubs’ competitions and will certainly bring it back with interest to Charterhouse for next year’s school indoor season.
Mr Fox noted "it’s been a great achievement for Raph and his team mates in reaching the national semi-final. To reach the latter stages of any competition means the squad has trained hard and prepared well; I am certain that all which Raph has learnt through his recent successes, will be of added benefit to the boys’ School 1st XI Hockey squad”.
