About the Club
Crowborough Hockey Club is a family friendly hockey club with competitive but fun teams at all age and ability levels. The club has three mens teams, four womens teams, two development squads and a thriving junior section. Our junior sides secured a number of tournament medals in the 2023/24 season and aims for a similar if not more sucessful 2024/25 season. In the season of 2023/24 our mens twos managed to win their league with an amazing team performance throughout the season and barely dropping any poibts. They represented our club perfectly and relayed our values as a club extremely well making it a joy to see them succeed. Due to the high demand of young girls developing through the Club we have been able to create another womens team which will be our womens fours and this will act as a supportive team to nurture young girls from girls hockey to womens hockey. This is such a big success for the club as we have only recently expanded the womens section into three teams, these youngsters are the future of the club and hold so much potential. We look forward to seeing the success of the upcoming season for all our sides. Bring on the season of 2024/25!!!
Club History
Crowborough Hockey Club was formed in December 1968 at an inaugural meeting at the Wolfe Recreation Ground, Crowborough by a small collective of hockey-loving enthusiasts. 16 players joined the first practice game at the Wolfe on Sunday 18th January 1969.
In attendance were Tony Gliddon, Brian Ware, M Vidler, Derek Prangnell, Doug Treacher, D Eldritt, D Jeggo, Peter Barford, R Smith, P Lynch, J Saunders, D Green, B Nye and M Stewart. The first competitive match was played against Crawley on 25th January with a final score of 4-4.
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By mid February the club had grown and Crowborough Hockey Club was able to field 2 men's sides, with a total of 32 playing members. Initially the teams took a while to ‘bed-in' and after a significant loss or two, goals started to appear on the scorecards. In these early games goal scorers included the likes of John Schumacher, Peter Barford, Tony Gliddon, Brian Nye and Alan Patterson. An "able and spectacular goalkeeper", Gary May joined the club as a relatively inexperienced player. And it was at this stage that our much treasured Ron Easton was making his appearance as an "enthusiastic winger", making many a dash up the right wing, and seemingly stressing the opposition defence.
The first Annual General Meeting of the club was held at the end of their first season, on Monday 28th April 1969 at the W.I. hall in Crowborough. They celebrated a club membership of 41 players. In his report the secretary, Derek Prangnell wrote "Such has been the enthusiasm that the ladies have also formed their section, and their membership is now 23".
It was at this meeting that the club, currently playing in white shirts and blue shorts, decided they needed a more distinctive colour to set them apart from the rest of the teams in the County. It was then that our infamous orange was born! Or tangerine, to be more precise.