At present the Ladies, unlike the Men, generally operate as a single age group drawing from a single pool of all ages. In the future, as numbers grow, they hope to be able to follow a path similar to the already established Men’s Thistles Sixties Plus sub-group, and/or divide into five-year intervals groups, subject to ages of the membership.
A Scottish Thistles Ladies team made its first appearance at our STMHC event in Dundee in 2021. Read the report.
Since then, in 2022, a Scottish Thistles Ladies team was entered into the International Super Veterans Tournament (ISVT) Tilburg in May, joining the Men, where it was used as a training weekend for the newly selected Over 65s Scotland squad prior to the Home Nations, with feedback to the Coach who could not attend. In addition, a team also participated in the STMHC event in Dundee, again primarily to serve as preparation for the World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa."
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"Charlotte Barrett joins the Thistles Hockey Club Executive Committee
As the club is evolving and has extended its membership to include Lady players, so there was a need to ensure that the Ladies are represented on the Executive Committee. Canvassing the Ladies team at the 2022 Thistles tournament bore fruit with Charlotte Barrett offering to help out.
Charlotte’s club is Fjordhus Reivers in the Borders. She moved to Scotland from Hertfordshire pursuing a career in the pharmaceutical industry in 2006, joining Selkirk Ladies at that time. Selkirk then merged with the Melrose and Hawick clubs to form Fjordhus Borders, later to become Fjordhus Reivers. In 2009 she first played Masters for Scotland Over 45s, performing in the new Home Nations competition against the Welsh and the English at Peffermill, proudly beating the English in the company of the likes of Ali Ramsay, Wendy Justice and Janet Jack. She has played Scotland Masters ever since. always pioneering in and for the oldest age group as Masters has developed, and was Over 65s skipper at the World Cup in Cape Town in October 2022; the first World Cup including this age group. The team proudly came away with the Silver Medal.
In England her last Club was St Albans, where her daughter both plays and coaches; she was Ladies Club Captain there, and later Treasurer before and after two spells working, and playing Veterans hockey, in the Netherlands in Amsterdam for Hurley, and then during lockdown training with Pinoké. Previously she has moved around England and Wales, playing at Hounslow, Cardiff University, for University of Wales, Windsor, Bracknell (winning the England ladies club veterans in 2004), and Berkhamsted & Hemel Hempstead clubs, plus both outdoors and indoors for Berkshire, and indoors also for Middlesex (her county of birth), and for Slough, a proud member of the indoor squad that won the England Indoor Club Competition in 1984.
Charlotte admits that, despite her involvement in club and Masters hockey in Scotland, she still has a lot to learn and connections to make, not in the least due to her returning to live in England, and twice in the Netherlands since her first outing with club hockey in Scotland. She believes the Thistles Exec, and she herself, will need to be patient before reaping any benefits from her participation; despite her now being retired, frankly she wonders how she ever had time for a full-time job."