The dream: Indoor Hockey World Cup

Hello, my name is Jonathan, I play for the USA Field Hockey Mens Team. It is an honor to be able to represent our country and play a sport that we love.

I want to share with you our story, and why we believe that we need help in order to compete internationally as a team.

Field Hockey is predominately a female sport in the United States, but unfortunately we, the National Mens team, are unable to compete at our highest level because of we lack funds.

In fact, other national teams have access to more funds than we do, which gives them an advantage over us. But still we persevere, despite a lack of funds, we make every penny work twice as hard and compensate the rest with hard work and the right mindset. We achieved miraculous things with this commitment from our players in the past! It has been a true blessing to find a group of like-minded individuals who share our passion for Field Hockey and goals for what we, with close to no funding, have won 1x Gold, 1x Silver and 2x Bronze Medals in the past 5 years. Even if that meant sacrificing everything else and dedicating yourself to the greater good of the team.

To give you a better idea of our team, most of the players are full time students who work part-time in order to compete internationally during their free time and holidays. At the same time teammates may attend college classes, write essays, take exams while juggling with their hockey and work schedules.

We've come so far. For the first time since 2011, this ambitious and highly skilled group of young men have qualified for the Indoor World Cup in South Africa in February of 2023.

But there are limits to everything, which is why we came up with ways to help us achieve our dream of going to Hockey Indoor World Cup 2023. The costs for travel, accommodation and training are extremely high—and unfortunately there is no support from the federation. It is too much for individual players and can influence the quality of a well rounded existing team, to a team based on not athletic prowess but for those able to afford the trip. Our goal is to represent the United States, with the best possible players and thereby grow the Men’s division of hockey. We want more people to be excited and be exposed to the sport we love and we also want to set an example of how hardwork and team work is worth following.

We don’t want the lack of funds to change our culture from a high performing environment that cares about winning, to an environment that supports player selection dependent on their financial situation.

The world is watching, and we have a big chance to make a positive impact an influence the perception of the amazing sport.

We know that our fans have been rooting for us with all their hearts and that they deserve a team that they can be proud of. So what can we do? We turn around, and look at all the people who have helped us get this far. They are the reason why we are standing here today. We have trained for this moment since we were young boys, we have put in the work and prepared for this moment. With your help, we can have one last dance and fulfill our dream to play a World Cup, a chance that comes only very rarely when a team plays without a great deal of federation support.