24 Oct 2025
In December 2025, the Welsh U21 women’s hockey team will be attending the Junior World Cup (JWC) in Santiago, Chile. Read more about the Junior World Cup below; how we qualified, what it means for Welsh hockey, and how we hope to fund our tournament.
5 minute read
Wales at the JWC – Overview
The Junior World Cup (JWC) is the pinnacle of junior hockey. While senior teams have various major tournaments – the Olympics (GB) and the Commonwealth Games (Wal, Sco, Eng), as well as the World Cup – the JWC is the highest level of hockey that you can play as an U21 team.
The last JWC attended by Wales was in South Africa (the 2021 edition, actually held in April 2022). With multiple teams dropping out of the tournament (Belgium, Russia, Spain, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine), Wales were asked to attend in 2022 as the next highest ranked team who were willing to go. Wales then finished 14th out of 15, which I remember watching from home as an U18 player, aspiring to one day play at that level.
There has since been another edition, also in Santiago (2023), which Wales did not qualify to attend. However, since the 2023 edition, the FIH has increased the number of teams in attendance from the usual 16, to 24, which meant that a legitimate qualification route opened up for Wales in Summer 2024, in the B-Division European Championships.
It is exciting to be going to this tournament as a team that has qualified directly through our own hard work, and now wanting to prove that we deserve to be there.
We will be sending 20 players, which includes a squad of 2 goal keepers, and 16 outfield players, as well as 2 travelling reserves (outfield). Along with fellow senior players, Caitlin & Betsan, I am honoured to have been chosen to captain this squad to success in Chile. See selection for the 20 player squad below:
In our pool, we will face Belgium, Zimbabwe, and Argentina – three tough teams who will all pose very different threats. We will need to adapt to each style and work incredibly hard in every game. As well as tactically and technically, our physical fitness will be put to the test, not to mention that it will likely be more than 30°C, in the middle of our Winter (Chile’s Summer)!
In a meeting with the squad, we set some goals for our tournament. Alongside specific performance targets, and process-oriented standards, we came up with the overarching goal of a top-half finish: top 12 out of 24.
As much as my (sometimes) blind optimism makes me want to set a goal of winning the entire tournament, this is simply unrealistic. In order to get a team to buy in to a goal, it must be achievable, and although top 12 will be difficult, and we may need to rely on pure grit and ‘scrappy’ wins, we genuinely believe that we are capable of doing it.
Wales are often seen as the ‘underdog’, and in the coming years, through the U21 and Senior programmes, we are aiming to change the narrative. Tournaments like this are so important, as it gives us a platform to prove that we are more than just the underdogs and that we can compete at the highest levels of hockey.
With the promotion to A Division Europeans for the U21 women, Senior women, and Senior men, as well as the Junior World Cup for U21 women, and a spot at a World Cup Qualifier for Senior men & women, Hoci Cymru is being put back on the map.
Qualification – Euros 2024
In the summer of 2024, Wales U21 women attended the EuroHockey Championships II-A (B Division), knowing that a gold medal would not only gain promotion to the Euro A Division in 2026, improving opportunities for future U21 Welsh teams, but it would also qualify us for a Junior World Cup; the highest level of hockey that exists at a junior level.
For the team that attended Euros, we felt we had a point to prove, knowing within ourselves that we were a group of incredibly talented players, but having never had the outcomes to prove it – in general, Welsh junior teams weren’t considered to be capable of top-level hockey, rarely winning medals.
We began the tournament with a hard fought 2-2 draw against a very strong Italian side, getting 1 point on the board. This left us a fair hill to climb, as the hosts Czechia started strong with 3 points.
In the next game, we were set to play Czechia, and due to the nature of tournament hockey, we needed a win. It was an end-to-end game, with both teams attacking hard, and defending even harder. It stayed at 0-0 until the final minute of the game. Deep in our defensive half, we won the ball, attacking forwards over three quarters of a pitch, all sprinting to get to the D.
With less than 10 seconds on the clock, we won a short corner, from which we subsequently won a penalty stroke. I stepped up to take the stroke, which was now after the final whistle – time had run out, and this was the deciding moment. Perhaps forgetting the pressure resting on this one penalty, with a clear mind, I put the ball in the net, before being swarmed by my team – still my absolute favourite moment of my hockey career (and possibly my entire life).
We won 1-0, securing the vital 3 points.
We then followed up this performance with a 5-0 win against Lithuania. Credit to their defence, it took us until the second half to find ourselves on the scoreboard, but once we scored one, our hockey began to flow, and we looked like the venomous team we knew we could be. Now, with 7 points on the board from our pool games, we were guaranteed that coveted spot in the final.
The gold medal match was a rematch between Wales and Czechia. It was an incredibly even game, sitting at 2-2 after three quarters. We found the back of the net in the final quarter, to go 3-2 up, and knowing how important that late lead was, we focussed on defending and keeping the strong Czech side away from our goal. I vividly remember counting down the last 30 seconds out loud to my team: 30… 20… 10… 5… 3, 2, 1.
We had secured gold, and qualified for the JWC.
The moment we won Gold
Funding Our Tournament
As I have mentioned before, the honour of playing for Wales comes with various challenges, including funding. Hockey is not a well-funded sport, and there are very few ‘professional’ players, particularly across the UK. This means that Wales often have very limited time to prepare for tournaments like the Junior World Cup, especially as an Under 21s team, and many of these trips are self-funded.
As well as the general lack of funding in the sport, with the tournament being across the globe in South America, and spanning 2 weeks (plus extra days to acclimatise to the heat), expenses for this trip will naturally put financial pressure directly on the players and their families.
We made a plan at the original JWC selection camp to set up a crowd-funding link. This will be split evenly between players to ease the financial burden placed on the girls who are selected to attend.
You can donate to my page of our campaign at the link below:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/amy-craddens-jwc-fundraiser
Any donation, big or small, is hugely appreciated by all players in the squad – even just the price of your morning coffee! We would not be able to attend without your help and generosity.
Another route of fundraising is through individual sponsors, which will partially cover our personal contribution. I am so grateful to everyone who has agreed to support the girls. If you, or anyone you know would be in a position to sponsor me, or one of the girls, please get in touch via email, or on LinkedIn (links below)! You can also view my other social media platforms by clicking on the links below.
Support Us From Home
Our first game is against Belgium on the 2nd of December. The full match schedule can be found on the FIH website at the link below:
Matches will be shown on Watch.Hockey
Follow mine & Hoci Cymru’s social media (@amycradden, @hoci_cymru) for updates on when and where to watch our games, as well as behind the scenes content from training camps and the tournament!
Thank you for taking the time to read about our Junior World Cup campaign.
-Amy (Crads)
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