Two improvements made by Malaysian Women Hockey Association – Hockey Update
Nasihin Nubli, the former National goal-keeper has been brought in as the head coach of the National Senior Women’s hockey team, as Yahya Atan is now the Director of the High Performance Development Division recently formed by the Malaysian Women Hockey
Association (MWHA).
This current move by the MWHA is an effort to try and improve the Women’s hockey program in the country.
The priority for Nasihin is to get the National Women’s hockey team ready for the Champions Challenge-2 which is to take place from May 7-15, 2011 in Vienna.
In order to improve the Malaysian Women’s hockey team, a series of training exercises were conducted to get the team on the field. However, the team has not had many matches with top tier teams which will definitely hamper their ability to take on some of
the World’s top teams in various international competitions in the hockey calendar.
With the team currently training for the Champions Challenge-2, a few matches have been scheduled with the Sony Japan team from March 29-31, 2011. Following these competitive matches the squad will next head off to Australia for an extensive tour. It is
the hope of the MWHA that the team performs well during the matches against Japan and builds some much needed confidence to take into the tour of Australia where they will be challenged with some of the best competitive field hockey.
Big international hockey tournaments like the 2012 London Olympics, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games approaching, the new High Performance Development Division has been put in place to get the team ready for these top tier events. This new division will
manage the entire National Development Program and will also focus on the Junior teams as well.
It is obvious that the MWHA are looking at the future development of Women’s hockey at the regional and national levels. Special attention is to be given to the Junior teams as they are a talent pool of players that have the potential to play at a higher
national level and represent the future of Women’s hockey in Malaysian.
It will be interesting to see how these new developments will provide a positive impact to the Women’s hockey team as they are to face Russia, Belarus and Belgium in their Pool B of the Champions Challenge-2. The MWHA is hoping for a stand out performance
by their team in the event as they seem to have invested a totally new strategy to cultivate the talent and train the players to be able to compete at the highest levels.
Regardless of the outcome, the Women’s hockey team of Malaysia will be looking to put in a good performance and gain some much needed practice before the major international hockey events.
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