Three years ago Steinhoff Maties Men's Hockey had only two representatives in the South African national squad; by the end of 2014 seven players from the Maties Men first team played for South Africa.
In 2012/2013 the club implemented a high performance strategy. "We earmarked certain players. They were mostly junior national players. We made the commitment of investing in them to see what we could add to them as hockey players," said current men's coach Neville Rothman.
These players included Dylan Swanepoel, Shannon Boucher, Marc Fourie, Keenan Horne and Daniel Bell. "We worked on their conditioning with extra high performance sessions. They had a supervised gym programme and we gave them a lot of personal attention. Kurt Cerfontyne gave them extra sessions to work on their overall game as well. Since we have started we have seen all of these players that were identified making the national squad."
Rothman added that the profile of Maties Men's hockey has increased dramatically. "One our biggest coups was to get Paul Revington as Maties Hockey's High Performance manager. You don't just get that kind of knowledge and experience like that." Revington is a former South African, Irish and Malaysian national coach. "The package that is Paul Revington will add greatly to Maties Hockey. Our goal is not only have national players, but players of international standard."
Also available for the individuals and teams in the High Performance setup are the mental skill programme and the monitored medical support offered by Campus Health.
There are three tiers to the top 25 players at the club - national level, junior national (U/21) and national U/19 players. "We will be working closely with all of them. With the high performance strategy we place a high premium on the individual. It is important to instill in them a culture that will take them to the next level."
The increased profile of Maties Men's Hockey – due to the success of the high performance strategy – has drawn some of the country's biggest stars of the future to the Stellenbosch University. Both Bili Ntuli and Jacques Bleeker who captained the South African U/18 boys' hockey team at the Youth Olympics and Australian series respectively joined the Steinhoff Maties Men this year. Bleeker, Ntuli, Rob McKinley, Alex Stewart, Garth Turner, Jonathan Cloete, Chris Hawkridge, Ross Talmage, Gareth Simmonds and Reece Arendse have all registered as first years at Stellenbosch University this year. This is the biggest intake of national U/18 and U/19 players at Maties since 2005. They will give a big boost to the depth of Maties Men's hockey.
Currently Jacques le Roux, Danie Bell, Dylan Swanepoel, Marc Fourie, Keenan Horne, Pierre de Voux, Shannon Boucher and Alex Stewart are in the national squad playing against Dutch club Rotterdam.
