Great Britain Para Ice Hockey have today announced their squad for the upcoming World Para Ice Hockey World Championships, Pool-C, in Thailand.
Head Coach Ian Offers has named a 14 player squad that includes 3 players making their GB debut, plus 4 players from the GB Women’s Team, who recently competed at the World Para Ice Hockey Women’s World Challenge in Green Bay, USA.
Josh Campbell from the Cardiff Huskies, Jamie Hutchcraft from the Peterborough Phantoms and AJ Mead from the Sheffield Steelkings will be pulling on the GB jersey for the first time at the tournament which runs from 6-11 December in Bangkok. The tournament will see GB face off against Armenia (6th), Kazakhstan (7th), hosts Thailand (8th), France (10th) and finally Austria (11th) in a 6 team round robin tournament. The top team will be promoted to the B-Pool of the Paralympic World Championships.
Stacey Quirk (Peterborough Phantoms), Dani Watts & Leanne Emmerson (Cardiff Huskies) alongside netminder Jodi Hill (GB Women) all join the team after impressing the coaching team during the recent women’s tournament in the US.
Alongside the new faces, the squad see’s Ian Warner, Nathan Stephens and Gary Farmer making a welcome return back to the GB programme after a number of years away.
Head Coach Ian Offers commented on the squad “We have put together a strong team for this tournament, as we look to gain promotion back up to Pool B. It’s great to be able to bring in the newer players, alongside the experienced players and everyone has bought into the programme and what we are trying to achieve.
“The GB Programme has seen a significant change over these past 6 years with a change in ethos and direction for the Great Britain Team plus the formation and success of the GB Women’s programme, and it’s great to see us able to put such strong teams out for tournaments now. After the pain of relegation in 2019 in Berlin, this tournament represents our chance to show how far we have come and gain our position back in the B Pool.”
Looking ahead to the games, he added “The tournament features a number of new teams to the sport, which is great to see. In recent years the C-Pool has only featured 2 or 3 teams so to have a 6 team tournament is a big step forward for the sport. Whilst we know about the France and Austria teams, the three newer teams (Armenia, Kazakhstan and Thailand) are a bit of an unknown quantity so we’ve been scouring the internet to gather as much information as we can ahead of the tournament. At the end of the day, we will go out and play the way we have trained for over the past 3 years with our single goal of gaining promotion.”
Great Britain Para Ice Hockey Team:
Andrew Mead – Sheffield Steelkings
Karl Nicholson – Manchester Mayhem
Dani Watts – Cardiff Huskies
Stacey Quirk – Peterborough Phantoms
Tyler Christopher – Cardiff Huskies
Gary Farmer – Sheffield Steelkings
Ian Warner – Peterborough Phantoms
Bryan Hackworth ‘NM’ – Sheffield Steelkings
Leanne Emmerson – Cardiff Huskies
John LeGalloudec – Cardiff Huskies
Josh Campbell – Cardiff Huskies
Jamie Hutchcraft – Peterborough Phantoms
Jodi Hill ‘NM’ – GB Women
Nathan Stephens – Cardiff Huskies
Ian Offers (Head Coach)
Peggy Assinck (Asst. Coach)
Breanne Wagner (Equipment / Team Manager)
Lauren Bolger (Physio)
Louise Taylor (Logistics Manager)
Games:
6th: 13:00 (06:00 UK) Armenia v Great Britain
7th: 13:00 ( 06:00 UK) Kazakhstan v Great Britain
8th: 20:00 (13:00 UK) Great Britain v Thailand
10th: 16:30 (09:30 UK) Great Britain v France
11th: 13:00 (06:00 UK) Great Britain v Austria
Games will be live streamed via the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Para Ice Hockey facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/ParaIceHockey
