Kinvara Hockey Club's Push for a Pitch

Kinvara Hockey Club’s PUSHFORAPITCH

⭐️⭐️Update - 14th June 2023........ ⭐️⭐️Great news…..!!⭐️⭐️

⭐️Huge step forward for Kinvara Hockey Club with recent Planning Permission GRANTED!⭐️

Next Fundraiser Event...

Our next fundraising event is An Art Raffle, further details will be announced shortly

Check out our Facebook page for updates.

Why Are We Fundraising?

Kinvara Hockey Club desperately needs to find a home. Our vision is for a full-size Astro pitch with a multisport surface, suitable for hockey as well as other sports – a community multisport pitch. We saw the future of our club hang in the balance last year and we now know for certain that we must secure a base to safeguard the future of this Olympic sport in South Galway and North Clare. There are many steps along the way but the first is to acquire land. Without a site, we cannot begin to develop the phases of the project or access any grants. €50,000 is our starting target to secure funding for land acquisition for this project. 

We have been steadily fundraising on this page since March 2020 and have held a range of fundraising events in addition to steady donations to this page. Some of these events are shown here as "Anonymous Offline Donations" and include Cake Sales, Static Cycles, Golf Competitions, Summer Camps, Used Gear Sales. We will do whatever we can to reach our goal! 

The Back Story to Our Campaign 

From humble beginnings on the sloped grass pitch at Seamount College Kinvara, our club was established 40 years ago. Over that time, the game of hockey has changed entirely, with astro pitches becoming the mainstay of the sport. The development of a small astro pitch at nearby St. Joseph’s National School in 2010 was a major changing point and reignited hockey in our area. While not a hockey-playing surface, it was a major step forward in allowing our players to move off sloped grass for the first time, as well as enabling the club to open to youth players. Exponential demand for hockey followed and in a short space of time, our needs began to outgrow this facility, with more space required to accommodate larger squad sizes along with a need to access a proper playing surface as skill levels advanced. With only one oversubscribed full-size hockey pitch in the Galway region, located 35km from Kinvara, the community pitch at Oranmore provided us with a base for our older groups until its redevelopment (with a change in playing surface) in 2020 made it permanently closed to hockey. A devastating blow for our rapidly-growing club. Left suddenly with nowhere to train for many of our squads, KHC faced closure until we found a temporary solution at Athenry (some 30km away). To access a full-size pitch, we must travel to Athlone (90km away). Without question, the time has arrived for us to find a permanent home of our own - not only to continue to cater for our Women in Sport and the growing numbers of girls from south Galway and north Clare wanting to play this Olympic sport but also to allow us to offer hockey training for boys and Hockey4All. In 40 years, Kinvara has never hosted a hockey match! Likewise, our local school teams must travel for all their matches meaning every game is an away game. Let’s give hockey the grassroots support it needs in our community – a community with a strong and successful tradition of hockey for over 40 years, despite the odds. Please donate and help us #PushForAPitch!