Having been eliminated during the qualification process for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, the Canadian women鈥檚 field hockey team has begun the long road to Tokyo 2020 by naming its national team and national development squad for 2016.
Returning to the Canadian senior team are Maddie Secco, an Oak Bay High grad and NCAA Pac-12 on-field and classroom standout at Stanford, and University of Victoria Vikes graduates Thea Culley, Danielle Hennig and goaltender Kaitlyn Williams. They are all bronze medallists from the 2015 Toronto Pan American Games. The national team will be centralized full-time in Vancouver beginning next month.
Named to the 2016 national senior development team are current Vikes stars and hometown Victoria products Kathleen Leahy and Rosie Beale. The Canadian junior development squad also features an Island-produced current UVic player from the 2015 CIS national runner-up Vikes 鈥� Alexis de Armond.
Island players on the 2016 junior development long list include de Armond, Anna Mollenhauer and Lindsay Cole.
In all, 62 players were cited, from the senior team to the junior development long list, in the first step of the 2020 Tokyo quadrennial, which will include the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, 2018 World Cup in London, England, and the 2019 Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru.
