Club Development
Vision
K-Sports Hockey Club exists to be a Club:
- Focussed on social and competitive hockey that caters for players of all abilities and ages
- That is a friendly and social organisation where people know each other and enjoy their membership
- That supports the aspiration for all members to participate to the best of their ability and at the top level for the best Senior and Junior players – whether through playing, coaching or umpiring.
What is the Ethos of the Club?
K-Sports Hockey Club has an ethos that has been built around its history and ambition to grow, develop and get back to its former glory days as a Hockey Club in Kent. There are also ambitions to surpass the former levels of success and become one of the key clubs in the community for the provision of Hockey, at all levels from grassroots to Elite/Performance sides.
Key characteristics of K-Sports Hockey Club today have been identified as follows;
- Cost effective and value for money
- Ambitious and driven to evolve/develop
- Social & Friendly Club, with a competitive edge
- “Home Grown” talent and success
K-Sports Hockey Club is a traditional, friendly club based in Ditton, Kent. Running both Mens and Ladies field hockey teams plus involvement in youth hockey we are firmly embedded in the history and future of club hockey in Kent.
Whilst there are trends for clubs to have to merge to form “Super-clubs”, K-Sports Hockey have proudly continued to field Mens and Ladies teams each week in the Kent League despite being historically constrained by not having our own AstroTurf pitch at our clubhouse.
Along with the ethos of K-Sports Hockey Club, there is the connection to K-Sports Management, whom are the owners and driving force behind the K-Sports Cobdown site.
K-Sports is committed to using the power of sport to improve opportunities for young people both educationally and vocationally.
Centred on the 28 acre Cobdown sports ground in Kent, K Sports’ unique mission and value is that it increases participation in a range of sports, fostering and encouraging excellence, along with supporting academic achievement and vocational learning. It will also become a fantastic family venue providing a community facility for sports enthusiasts of all ages and abilities.
They aim to deliver a range of education courses and apprenticeships that add real value and prove the importance of sports as a conduit for social improvement.
Partnerships will be set up with local FE Colleges, Universities, Schools and Education Departments that will enable K Sports to deliver a selection of courses that benefit a wide range of people.
Where are we now?
Structure and Management
Together with the K-Sports FC and K-Sports Squash, K-Sports Hockey Club forms part of the K-Sports Management organisation which is the overall management body for K-Sports Cobdown. The Clubs share a facility in Ditton, which is in the borough of Tonbridge & Malling. Members of each of the playing clubs are automatically affiliated to the K-Sports Cobdown Club and are able to use the shared sporting and social facilities.
Financially, each playing club operates autonomously, raising membership subscriptions and covering its own sport’s costs. K-Sports Management, however, as the overall managing organisation, owns all land and property used by the sports, and where there are pitches, these are in the name of the K-Sports Management. K-Sports Hockey Club are registered as Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs).
The K-Sports Cobdown Facility development and refurbishment project is being managed on behalf of the Club by a Development Committee operating under a mandate from the K-Sports Hockey Club Committee (General Committee), which manages all other aspects of the Hockey Club.
The Club is currently in a sound financial condition, with the major costs being met by subscriptions and match fees. The annual budget is set to create a small surplus with fund raising efforts feeding a development fund. The Club is managed on a day-to-day basis by the Club’s General Committee. The General Committee is responsible for the overall management and development of the Club, and for these purposes has power to appoint such sub-committees as it may deem necessary or expedient.
A separate Development Committee has been appointed by the General Committee and, subject to the overall supervision of the General Committee, is responsible for longer term development both on and off the pitch. This document has been put together by this Development Committee.
Membership and Composition
K-Sports Hockey Club is a successful family club, currently running two Men’s and two Ladies’ sides. We are one of the Region’s long standing clubs.
Originally founded in circa 1936, K-Sports Hockey Club (KSHC) has a long term association with the Cobdown Sports & Social Club (now K-Sports Cobdown) with whom we share a clubhouse at the ground.
Development Objectives
Hockey is an ever changing sport and it is vital to the survival of K-Sports Hockey Club that we plan for the future. It is important that we carefully plan where we want to be in the future and take measured steps to achieving those aims.
The Club Development Committee has worked with the Club Management Committee to set out our clubs vision for the future in this Club Development Plan, taking feedback from all parts of the Club.. The aims and the way in which the club will look achieve them have been documented and will be regularly reviewed and updated. It is a long term document which sets out the ethos of the club and highlights key objectives that the club wants to meet. It does not go into large amounts of detail but will include a time scale and will state which role holder or group within the club will have overall responsibility for each objective. Each objective will then be grouped by the timescale and a priorities and objectives plan created. This is where the detail for the next year/season will emerge. Ideally, at each club committee meeting, the priorities and objectives will be referred to and reviewed to ensure progress is being made. At the end of each season, the priorities and objectives plan should be comprehensively reviewed and renewed for the following year according to the review and the club’s development strategy. This would happen year on year until the development plan has reached the end of the time period it was written for.
The priorities and objectives plan will include fine detail about timescales, who is going to deliver the objective, with what resource, how can it be measured and when will a review take place to determine success or otherwise.