USA Field Hockey News

Nation's Top Young Field Hockey Athletes to Compete in USA Field Hockey's National Futures Championship

►Futures Rosters

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Some of the nation’s top young field hockey players will display their skills for national team selectors when USA Field Hockey conducts its National Futures Championship, June 30-July 4 at the USA Field Hockey National Training Center in Virginia Beach, Va.

      Presented by Longstreth, the Championships feature 646 of USA Field Hockey’s top high school-aged athletes from 25 states and the District of Columbia competing in Under-14, Under-16 and Under-19 divisions. One hundred fourteen matches are scheduled over the five-day tournament with Futures National Championship medals awarded to the winning teams in each division.

Through their performances at the event, athletes may also earn selection to higher-level USA Field Hockey programs and competition teams including  the AAU Junior Olympic Team (U14 and U16 athletes), Futures Elite, the USA/Canada Field Hockey Challenge Cup Team, the Olympic Select Program, USA Field Hockey’s Junior National Camp or an assignment to a USA Field Hockey High Performance Center. The tournament also provides an evaluation opportunity for collegiate coaches to view and rate the nation's top field hockey athletes as potential student athletes in their respective programs.

The culmination of USA Field Hockey's Futures Program, the National Futures Champions features the top athletes from the more than 5,000 of the program’s nation-wide participants. After receiving five months of elite-level training and tactical instruction in preparation for possible future selection to the USA National Teams, Futures athletes compete in regional tournaments where the top players are then selected to compete at the national championship tournament.

Pennsylvania led all states with 119 athletes selected to the tournament, followed by New Jersey with 95, Virginia, 64;  New York, 59; Massachusetts, 43; California, 38; Connecticut, 27 and Maryland, 26.           

Complete rosters for the tournament are available on the USA Field Hockey website at www.usfieldhockey.com/futures.

At the National Futures Championship, teams compete in four-team round-robin pool play before advancing to crossover and classification matches to determine the Under-14, Under-16 and Under-19 champions.