History

Tartans Hockey Club was established in 1964 as a breakaway club from Athletes.  Athletes Hockey Club was a club created by a local athletics coach to keep his “girls” fit over winter. The break came following a disagreement over player participation in a finals game.  Rumour has it that the athletics coach did not want his athletes playing in the hockey grand final as they had an athletics competition the following week and he did not want any injuries.  The serious hockey players including Pat Wade, OAM and Sandra Fenton rebelled at this approach and Tartans Hockey Club was formed.

The club played in what was, at that time, known as the Cronulla section of the NSW Women's Hockey Association.  The club won our first senior premiership in Women’s third grade in 1965. This was followed by premierships in both first grade and second grade in 1967 and then a run of 5 first grade premierships from 1969 – 1973.  In all the club has won 10 first grade premierships (up to 2023) with 9 second grade premierships, 7 third grade premierships (including premierships in 2015 and 2016 in the Moorebank competition) and 1 fourth grade premiership.

The club first entered junior teams in the 1977 season.  The first junior team was a group of girls pulled together by Cynthia Hestelow. She approached the Sutherland Shire Women’s Hockey Association to find a club without junior teams that her group of local girls could affiliate with.  That first team won the junior fourth grade competition in 1977.  They went on to win junior third grade in 1978 and 1979, were runners  up in second grade in 1980, won junior first grade in 1981 and 1982 and in 1982 also won senior second grade.

With junior first grade premierships in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020 the club has now won 12 first grade junior competitions, 5 second grade junior competitions, 9 third grade junior competitions and 6 fourth grade junior competitions.   We have also won 7 modified hockey competitions.

We fielded our first men's team in the Sydney Hockey Sydney League 6 competition in 2018. The team was a good mix of experience and inexperience, age and youth.  They finished the season in fourth place and went on to win the major premiership.  A wonderful achievement for a first year team.  They backed up winning in 2019 and playing in the grand final in 2020.

The club has always had a strong presence in representative teams.  In the early days players represented the Sutherland Shire Women’s Hockey Association as well as Sydney (a Sydney team selected from players participating in all women’s competitions run in Sydney) and NSW.

The early junior players represented the Sutherland Shire Women’s Hockey Association as well as St George Region (schools), Metropolitan East (schools), Zone 8, Sydney East Region (schools), City and NSW.  Later players have represented Sutherland Shire Hockey Association, Sydney South Hockey Association, Sydney East and McKillop (schools) and New South Wales.  Our latest higher level representatives are Zoe Newman (NSW Under 18 and Under 21 representative as well as an Australian schoolgirls representative and an Australian Indoor representative at senior level) and Harry Roberts , selected to represent NSW at under 16 schools and selected to the HNSW Under 18 Blues team in 2018 as well as the HNSW AAP Program for 2019 and subsequently in the covid affected HNSW Under 21 teams.  Carol Harriss, one of our life members, was selected to represent NSW at the Over 70s Masters National Championships held in Perth in October 2024.

On 12 February 2023 Zoe Newman made her international field hockey debut for the Hockeyroos, in an FIH ProLeague Game against Germany played at Sydney Olympic Park.

In 2019 Pat Wade OAM, a founding and life member of the club;  Carol Harriss OAM a life member and current player with the club and Julene Manglesdorf OAM, a former club treasurer were all awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the general division, OAM.