5th March 2007
New Recruits Fly in!
The Welsh Hockey Union is delighted to announce two new additions to the office staff. Mike Leatt, who joined us on 1st March as Chief Executive Officer, arrives from a highly successful career with the Royal Air Force.  He brings with him a wealth of strategic and organisational management experience and is particularly well qualified for the challenges ahead. Mike has held executive appointments on front line bases, in training, and in logistics and financial planning as well as heading up the RAF Lawn Tennis Association. Whilst in Whitehall, he worked alongside other government departments and was the MOD Representative for the Olympic Bid. With a lifetime of playing representative hockey, tennis and rugby, he remains passionate about and committed to hockey, being both a current player and coach at club and regional levels.

Mike said, ‘I am delighted to be entrusted with an opportunity to help create a climate for the success of hockey in Wales. To be successful, I believe promoting participation; support and development of players, clubs, coaches and officials; and the raising of our international standing are key goals we must meet. I look forward to working with the wider hockey community to deliver in each of those areas.’

Matt James joins us today as Club Development Manager. Born and educated in Wales, and having represented his country at U21 level, University took him to England where he has spent the last 6 years managing the sports side of a community / social enterprise in Sheffield. He has also lectured part time at Sheffield University as well as having researched and published a number of journals on the subject of volunteering.

Following the AGM in January, the Board has also elected Karen Evans as the new Chair of the WHU. Many of you will know Karen as she has umpired all over Wales, and has involved on the administration side of the regional set-up in South Wales for many years. With this experience, Karen is well placed to lead the Board in facing up to the challenges that await them over the coming year.
 
 “Development for successful performance” sets out the aims of the Union over the next 2 years and sets the strategic direction for subsequent plans. We are confident that these new recruits will play a significant part in delivering on the objectives within that document. In developing this plan we were forced to look at how we service all levels of our sport.

Despite our main focus being development, it is crucial that we continue to have a presence on the European and World stage. In order to give our athletes the best chance of representation at the highest level we need to regionalise and deliver services to athletes on a local level. This has meant that, regrettably, we could no longer support the office-based post of National Performance Coach. David Griffiths has made this role his own over the last two years and has been a valuable member of the WHU team. We fully anticipate that he will continue to use his expertise to the benefit of Welsh Hockey in the wider coaching and development arena.

The above text is also available as an MS Word download (28kb)

Back to top of page