North Harbour Hockey 5.19

In 1973 the North Shore Women's Hockey Association was formed on Auckland's North Shore and in 1975 established its headquarters at Rosedale Park in Albany. The Association grew rapidly and in 10 years had doubled in size and incorporated the largest junior girls division in New Zealand hockey, a status the present day NHHA still holds.

In 1983, men's competitions, separate from Auckland Hockey Association, were run for the first time, as the North Shore (Mens) Hockey Association was formed as a sub-association of Auckland. Secondary and Junior Divisions quickly grew, a name change to North Harbour Hockey Association followed in 1987 and, in 1989, the men's association was established in its own right, independent of Auckland.

In 1988, NSWHA worked alongside the NHHA to lay their first artificial turf (Sand) beside the 9 grass fields at Rosedale Park. In 1992, the two separate associations amalgamated to form the current North Harbour Hockey Association (1992) Inc.

In order to cope with continuing growth and development, NHHA in conjunction with North Shore City Council established a new hockey complex at Rosedale Park South. In 1996/97 two water turfs were laid and in 1998 Stage I of a pavilion was erected between the turfs. The building was completed to its present status in 2000 and today all North Harbour hockey is centred on the complex.

In 2004/5 a third water turf was added adjacent to the other two to make North Harbour Hockey Stadium the largest NZ hockey centre.

Facilities

Our pavilion incorporates the Association's offices, bar, canteen, lounge, conference and briefing rooms, changing rooms and is a viewing platform for both water turfs.

Since 1997, all hockey at North Harbour has been played on artificial surfaces. However, the one sand turf and three water turfs can no longer cope with all our competition and training requirements and increasing amounts of turf time are being used at Rangitoto College water turf and the new Kristin School turf opened in 2009.

Current Scene

NHHA is the second largest association in NZ with some 4300 winter season and 2000 summer players drawn from both urban and rural areas. Our catchment area extends from Devonport to beyond Warkworth in the east, over to Massey and through to Helensville in the west. The Association manages competitions for 11 clubs, 19 secondary schools and 54 junior schools, catering for the midget, novice players through to masters players in their 60's.

Eight paid staff, CEO, Manager, Administration Officers (2), CoachForce Officers (2), Representative Co-Ordinator and Finance Officer handle the day to day administration of the Association. Full-time coaching staff provide assistance to all schools and coaching courses are run for players, coaches and umpires. More advanced clinics are held to develop our representative players who are selected to play in North Harbour teams from primary school age through masters. The successful coaching programmes have seen considerable improvements in the results of our representative teams at their respective National Tournaments in the last five years. In all, North Harbour organises 32 representative teams each year.

Club competitions are held on Saturdays and Sundays, Secondary Schools play on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings and Juniors play Monday and Tuesday evenings as well as Saturday mornings. During summer months, twilight competition are held for Juniors, Youth, Mixed seven aside social and Masters players.

Interspersed amongst the formal structures is a very strong band of dedicated and loyal volunteers, without whom we could not function.