Management committee minutes for June

The management committee minutes for June are available.  These covers things like:

• formation of a fundraising committee
• casual player insurance
• coaches for adult sections for next year
• pitch committee work
• possible conversion to registered charity
• club logo

Read them here.

Men's fixtures 2015-16 released

The fixtures for the 2015-16 men's season have now been released and can be seen at Fixtures Live. Dan gives us the lowdown:

For the 1st team, there are 12 teams in total. Stirling Wanderers 1sts and CALA Edinburgh Colts have replaced Dunfermline City and Carnegie. Unfortunately, the last game of the season is away at Fidra (02/04/16)! First 3 games are away! Starting at Stirling Wanderers (19/09/15). Another interesting point is Erskine Stewart Melville have ditched their 3rd team and have replaced it with their 2s team! They played the likes of Stirling Uni 1s and Perthshire 1s last year so will be very tough indeed! 

For the 2s team, the league only consists of 8 teams. This does not mean you will play 14 games (once home and away). There are an additional 7 games (yes this does include an additional trip to Fidra!) that seem to have been chosen at random. First game is away to Peebles on 12/09/15 and the final game is at home against Peebles on the 02/04/16. Again some tough teams like Eskvale 1s but overall seems to be not too bad.

Ladies Circle pitch in

Some more good news on the pitch fund front. Kinross Ladies Circle have offered a £1500 donation, taking the fund to over £4000.

“Ladies Circle is open to anyone aged 18-45 who like to mix fundraising and socialising. We have fun outings including comedy nights, dances, craft making, theatre trips, lots of meals and drinks out.”

For those that haven't come across the Ladies Circle before, it acts as a way for women to combine two useful activities, namely socialising and fundraising.

On the fundraising front they are involved in the catering arrangements for the annual St Andrews to Edinburgh cycle ride and they organise an annual comedy night.

As far a social activities go, recent activities include necklace making, fly fishing, ceroc dancing, pottery painting, theatre trips, girly shopping weekends and so on. Their website also mentions champagne and chocolate. They also have a  Facebook page here. If you are interested in getting involved, I'm sure they'd be pleased to hear from you.

Huge thanks from everyone at the club to everyone at the Ladies Circle.

Cheque presentation

The Young Farmers came down to the KGV last night to present their £1000 donation towards the pitch fund. The cheque was accepted by KHC president Gail Nelson on behalf of the club.

International Wilson

Congratulations are also due to Alex Wilson, who had his debut for Scotland U16s against Ulster at the Glasgow National Hockey Centre last weekend.

There's an action shot here.

Top guy

Congratulations are due to Struan Hepburn, ex-Kobra and current midfield dynamo for the men's 2nds, who will be head boy at Kinross High next year.

Hope it's not going to interfere with your hockey Struan!

Club day: 22nd August

From Vicki Miller, social secretary

We are in the process of arranging a pre-season club day.  This is going to take place on Saturday 22nd August at Kinross Hockey Club. Please put this date in your diary!

The idea is to get as many old and new faces of all different ages and stages along for a fun day and night of hockey, socialising and fundraising for the club!  The event will take the format of a round robin tournament in the afternoon. This will be followed by some food and drinks at the club.  The EuroHockey Championships will also be on the TV which ties in nicely.

I will be in touch with more details in due course but please make sure you keep the date free!

Young Farmers pitch in

The Kinross branch of the Young Farmers have made a wonderful donation to the pitch fund, pledging £1000, which makes it our largest contribution to date.

Our sincere thanks to everyone in Kinross & District JAC for their support.

Kobras at Inverleith

With weary inevitability, the weather turned cold again for the Kobras trip to Peffermill for the Inverleith Tournament and parents endured several more hours of freezing cold touchlines. That said the hockey more than compensated. Inverleith is a huge event, with games running on two pitches simultaneously and brining the chance to play old foes as well as trying our luck against some less familiar opponents, including some from the strongest clubs in the east of Scotland.

We pitched up with one team at each age group: U10, U12 and U15 and it's fair to say that we had typical Kobras performances: winning more than we lost but occasionally slipping up against teams that we could have beaten. The old curse of sleeping our way through the first matches was also in evidence, at least at U12.

What was heartening about the whole day was the level of commitment from everyone. Kinross teams are showing themselves to be tough cookies at every age group and, particularly at U10, bodies were being put on the line to keep the opposition out. Very few teams we came up against were able to dominate us, and we always gave a good account of ourselves.

There's still lots for everyone to learn in terms of technique and particularly teamplay, but we're heading in the right direction.

New kit arrives

The goods ordered with our Sainsbury's Active Kids vouchers arrived today. We have four bags of balls, a wheelie bag and a whistle. The smooth balls were not quite as advertised, so if your heart was set on the wacky colour scheme you are going to be disappointed. No doubt some will be pleased though.

Many thanks to everyone who collected the vouchers.

Vote Kinross!

With a bit of luck, everybody has had a look around the new website by now, and in particular I hope you've had a chance to read the news item about the Pitch In campaign, which we hope will raise us enough money for a new pitch at KGV.

There are lots of ways that might raise us the money, and we'll be discussing these in the coming weeks and months, but here is a relatively painless one to start with.

Mars are running something called the Mars Milk Fund. The public gets to vote for a variety of good causes in the sporting arena and each month the cause with the most votes gets a thousand pounds. With a bit of luck and a bit of work by Kinross members, we might be able to make it happen.

All you need to do is go to this webpage. After telling them your age and clicking "Continue", you are taken to a page about our campaign. All you have to do is click on the "Vote" button.

Oh yes, and email everyone (EVERYONE!) you can think of and tell them to vote for us too.

And then tweet the link to your Twitter followers, share it with your Facebook friends, Instagram it, Snapchat it, Reddit it, send it out by carrier pigeon and generally shout it from the rooftops.

OK?

Over to you.