Pink Ladies Hockey Club 10th Anniversary Weekend Wrap-Up!
We set out on a mission to celebrate a decade of our wonderful club community - thanks for being part of it!
WELL… that was some weekend for one weekend! Will we ever fully recover? Will our voices ever come back? Will we ever see the likes of it again?! We certainly hope so, on all three counts… as the dust settles on our belated Pink Ladies 10th Anniversary celebrations - first and foremost, we want to say MASSIVE THANKS to all of you who made it along to either or both of the events last Saturday and Sunday. To say that the weekend surpassed our expectations is an understatement. Committees make the plans - but it’s the people that make the places, and both The Blitz and The Ball quite simply would not have been as EPIC as they were without YOU buying your tickets and committing to the craic! So many people made such a huge effort to spend their bank holiday weekend with us, and we are immensely grateful. Here’s a recap of how it all went down… safe to say, it was worth the wait!
SATURDAY: THE PINK LADIES HOCKEY BLITZ
We couldn’t possibly have a celebration of all things Pink Ladies without some of the ol’ stick n’ ball game in the mix! The plan was a simple one - get the gang back together where it all began over a decade ago, on the Patterson Pitch in UCD. That fateful day in April 2011, five hockey players chipped in to book a quarter-section of an astro pitch and hit a ball around for an hour - Pink Ladies Hockey Club was officially born - and the rest, as they say, is history...
Last Saturday, we welcomed over 50 members of the PinkHockey family onto that very same pitch for a blitz in celebration of how far we’ve come as a club throughout the past eleven-and-a-half years. Six squads, many matches, goals a’plenty - Pink Ladies past and present teamed up with our visiting Dutch counterparts The BabyGays for a jam-packed afternoon of action. Once the business of The Blitz was wrapped up, it was off to Farmer Brown’s in Clonskeagh for ye old classic combination of pints & platters, as the chats n’ craic continued long into the evening… a perfect PinkHockey Saturday!
The White Team may have taken home the prizes - but it was HOCKEY that was the real winner! Thanks to everyone who came along to play, to support and to help out - and special thanks to our umpires Lauren Murray, Iris Bunnig & Leonoor Schiphorst for ensuring that everything ran smoothly on-pitch. Thanks also to Rebecca Murphy, who captured the day's action - check out her full set of photos by clicking the button - download ‘em as you like, but please tag / credit @rebeccam_ire if you’re sharing them on The ’Gram!
SUNDAY: THE PINK LADIES HOCKEY BALL
On Sunday, it was the big one… the inaugural Pink Ladies Hockey Ball! The anticipation was palpable as over 100 Pink Ladies landed into The Angler’s Rest in Chapelizod and the venue filled up with the giddy chatter of old friends being reunited, and new ones being introduced. As the wining and dining began, speeches by the PL10 Sub-Committee’s Elaine Buckley and Club Vice-Captain Roz Gallie set the tone for the evening as a celebration of the Pink Ladies Hockey Club community, which for over a decade has served as a safe queer space for women of all different ages and backgrounds to find themselves and their tribe through sport. In a room full of Pink Ladies from all of the different eras of the club, united by that collective experience - it was only a matter of time before the sport-feelings, the reminiscing and the chanting were in full flow…
There was also the important business of the end-of-season awards for 2022, in celebration of a summer which saw Pink Ladies Hockey Club scale exciting new heights in terms of new memberships, training participation and touring numbers. Cata Montino Mena took home the Best On-Pitch Score award for terrorising the Dutch net in Nijmegen; Jaden Grant claimed the Moment of the Season title for her impactful Pink Hockey debut; and we won’t say here who won Best Off-Pitch Score... but they know who they are, and you just had to be there! Onto the major club honours for 2022… Ash Lynch was revealed as the Rising Star of the Season, as voted by the club coaches; Phil Curley was awarded Player of the Season, as voted by the club players; and the Kate O’Donnell ‘Spirit of Pink Ladies’ Award was presented to Lynn Hanly, as voted by the club committee. Massive congratulations to all of the award winners!
For the landmark night that was in it, we also surprised two individuals with special awards... as she wrapped up her after-dinner speech, club founder Etain Kidney was awarded Lifetime Membership of Pink Ladies Hockey Club, as a thank you from all members past and present for giving us the gift of our community; and to finish the ceremony in style, an Award of Outstanding Contribution to Pink Ladies Hockey Club was presented to Lucy Whitaker, in recognition of her being the ONLY person within the Pink Lady ranks to have competed in all ten PinkHockey tournaments that our club has featured in since its inception - an incredible record. Emily Gunter of The BabyGays said a few words to wrap up proceedings, celebrating the special bond that exists between The Irish and The Dutch - and from there, it was time to PARTY! The dance-floor was the place to be as all-out chaos ensued - from the impromptu rock-the-boat for ‘Proud Mary’, to the emphatic rendition of ‘I Love It’, to the sing-song that followed - the energy in that room was electric, and we know it’s gonna light the way forward into a bright future for Pink Ladies Hockey Club.
Debbie Hickey was on hand with her trusty camera throughout it all… you can check out the full set of photos by clicking the button - work away downloading them as memories to treasure, but if you’re sharing elsewhere please be sure to tag / credit @debstudioten:
THE AFTERMATH… WHAT'S NEXT?
Well, that’s up to YOU… as the sportsfeelings speeches on Sunday night specified, loud n’ clear - Pink Ladies HC is YOUR club - it will always be here for you, and it never really leaves you - even if you might leave it for a l’il while. Please know that the door to training sessions, to trips away, and to social events is always open - you will have seen ‘Save the Date’ posters last weekend, highlighting the dates and venues for key club events upcoming - and we’re including them again here now. Input them to your calendar, write them into your diary - do whatever you have to do to make sure you’re there! We would LOVE for all of you to be as much a part of the next decade of the club as you have been for the one-and-a-bit that we celebrated last weekend - and if you have any feedback or suggestions for future-proofing our wider community, we’d love to hear them - so please do reach out to us, at any stage. Until the next time… THANKS AGAIN!
-The PL10 Sub-Committee
Bucko, Etain, Emma, Jacqui, Jenn, Lucy, Rebecca & Sarah
