How Witney have built success both on and off the pitch

Rod Gilmour of The Hockey Paper speaks to the West Oxfordshire side making headway in the Vitality Women’s Hockey League.

With one of the youngest chairs in English hockey, coupled with one of the oldest National League captains, it is fair to say that Witney HC is a mix of fresh, innovative ideas coupled with continuity and experience.

In 2016, Witney women were in South Division Three A. Now, after four promotions in six seasons, they reside in Vitality Women’s Division 1 South and will play their first home match this weekend in front of growing crowds.

At the helm for the last 15 years is coach Chris Boyle, a former France international goalkeeper and experienced National League player. Katie Gatt, 43, has been captain for 13 of those years.

“It’s like we are married to each other, we talk so much,” laughs Katie. “He is so good at what he does. We work with what we’ve got and he has just made players better to make a whole team. We’ve dealt with each situation we are in and have just upped our game.

“We spent time in Div 3 South struggling to get out of the league until the England Hockey restructuring. We have been building it for a long time and all of a sudden it has clicked."

Witney’s style has been billed as ‘Champagne hockey’ by the local media. “We press and press and press,” Boyle told the Oxford Mail recently. “Why have it in our half when we can win it in theirs?”

And Gatt, an operations manager at a diversified farm, naturally agrees. “We play an exciting brand of hockey. In our first National League game last year, we lost 6-5 to Firebrands. Imagine that in an opening game with 11 goals, the crowd was elated!”

It was to be the only game the club lost in a stellar promotion year to Division 1, a season where Witney rallied. “As a maths teacher and deputy head, statistics are Chris’ thing,” says Gatt. “We were behind in a lot of games before coming back which showed our tenacity.”

Gatt is currently sidelined with injury, while her 19-year-old daughter Chaselea is keeping the family name in the starting XI, the club’s season beginning with defeat on the road at Isca & University of Exeter. “The pitch was tricky,” admitted Gatt. “We had travelled three hours to be there. We lost 2-0 but it shows we can compete in this league.”

Club chairman Liam Frost has backed the women’s 1s all the way. Aged 27, he has been chair for four years and recognises the need for the sport to be visible, the club having attracted a local media company as sponsor following their social media profile and in local newspapers.

The club has two members who work on social media channels ‘like a full-time job’. Witney has now doubled junior numbers since the start of Covid, having forged relationships with schools, with a majority of members being state school children who will largely have only one contact hour of hockey per week. 

“Each social media campaign the club looks to focus on getting one new member in return, which pays for the advertising spend,” says Frost. “When we did our junior advertising last year, we focused on flyering with primary schools. We spent £100 and ended up with 40 new kids. It’s a small outlay but the impact ends up being big if you target the right schools.

“We’ve sold thousands of pounds of advertising for the pitch in the last few years, also focusing on individual sponsors for the women’s players. We’re not one of the big names in the country on hockey and although we try and support them as best we can, we like them to get their own sponsor which they’ve all done.”

The club’s digital output began post-Covid, to ensure Witney came back stronger in player numbers. Frost says: “We are in a space where other sports are getting pushed above hockey. We have to make our own route.”

Frost is naturally buoyed by the women’s 1s ‘meteoric rise’, especially given that a majority of the team are homegrown. “We were last in the National League around 25 years ago,” adds Frost. “The fact they won Conference West in their first season back was both surprising and incredible.

“Chris has been instrumental in the club’s success. We had a conversation about how the team could move forward and he didn’t want to go out and get the big names. He quite simply said that he wanted to make every player in the team better.”

With the team’s success, Witney is also continuing links with its base at Wood Green School, who are now focusing on hockey as a sport. Meanwhile Witney are busy building dugouts and a spectator area. “We are embedded in Witney as a town and there is a good buzz around the club,” says Frost on their digital campaigning. “We are giving people that opportunity for people to play and to come back to the sport.”

The first team has raised the profile of the club to such a degree that two new women’s sides have been formed in the last few seasons, a women’s 5s running out for the first time this year.

“Liam has been a force throughout all this,” says Gatt. “He has been leading us as chairman, we became National League and he has really stepped up so that we can compete both on and off the pitch.

“We’re more than aware the jump in the league. We just want to stay up and also give everyone in the club the chance to be coached by some of us in the 1s. It’s really important for us to sing from the same song sheet.”

Saturday: Witney v Wimbledon 2s, 12:30pm