It’s 1996 and Arsenal FC come in to my primary school to deliver a session that will change the rest of my life.
Hockey. Who would have thought? In the middle of Concrete Jungle, Islington, a football club are coming in to teach some state school kids how to play hockey..
I fell in love with the game because of the skill, the speed, the intricacy (and of course the link with Arsenal), and later that year I had another couple of “1sts”: My first experience of a London Youth Games, and my first time watching an Olympic Games.
These first few months of exposure to hockey were enough to instil an aspiration inside of me that continued for a long, long time. I wanted to be at an Olympic Games, and I’m still doing everything I can to make it happen.
20 years on, I’m back in Islington schools trying to deliver hockey sessions and share my story with the students. There is a London Youth Games this year, and the Olympics will be on the TV for them to watch, just as I did.
They may not be guaranteed the same story I had, but this could be the start of their own story.
Darren Cheesman 