Olympic Gold Medallist Janneke Schopman gave 120 young players in Temuco, Vina del Mar and Santiago de Chile an unforgettable experience. During the third week of February, the Dutch star visited Chile.

Last year Chile was selected as one of the five prize winners of the WorldHockey Youth Challenge 2008. They organized a beautiful “Live the Dream” event, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hockey at the Olympic Games.

The Dream lived on during the visit of Janneke Schopman. Schopman, key defender in the Dutch Golden Olympic Team presented herself not only as a very good player, but also as a great coach. In several workshops and clinics she brought the players up to speed with the basics in modern hockey and revealed the secrets of a winning team.

A variety of skills were presented as the fundamentals of hockey and practiced fanatically by the participants. Innovative training methods were shared to get the best out of everybody. Janneke also showed the road to Olympic success and her experiences being an Olympian and a leader in the team.

The players really enjoyed Janneke’s presence. Through the interactive approach everyone got the opportunity to express their views and exchange thoughts with the Olympic hero. One of the participants:  “We learned an amazing lot in a short space of time, not only about skills but also about life. To become a star and a winning team you have to sacrifice, focus and share a dream, a dream that we all want to follow and realize for hockey in Chile”.

Janneke was impressed with the level of the players and the passion and receptiveness of her audience to become a better player. Skills are developed differently in the Netherlands, but the players adapted very easily and showed their full capacity!

Géraldine Hart Vorobyoff, hockey developer in Temuco, said: “This was a great opportunity offered by the FIH to work with a high level world player who is up to date with the current best practices and developments pathways. It was a very instructive, enjoyable, refreshing and a very worthwhile visit”.

Esteban Geyger, president of the Chilean Hockey Association: “Let me tell you how great it was, this visit of Janneke. She made this week, with her clinics, chats with the players, her gold medal and her personality a historical week. Thank you so much!

I would definitely like to repeat this experience again, as you can not imagine what this brings alive. It does not only encourage young people to be involved in hockey, but it also stimulates us as National Directors to move on in the chosen direction to develop our youth.

We need these to do it again next year, no matter how and we appreaciate all help from FIH in realizing this. Thanks to the FIH Development Manager and all involved at the FIH for this great event. Our Dream lives on....”.