Great Britain's women's hockey team earned promotion to Group IB in dominant form, now they're looking for a double bounce promotion.
Great Britain's women's hockey team earned promotion to Group IB in dominant form, now they're looking for a double bounce promotion.
Great Britain advanced from Group IIA in the IIHF women's World Championships in a dominant format. Now, the growing hockey nation is looking to "double bounce" and win promotion again from Group IB.
New captain Jodie Alderson-Smith called the hopeful double promotion a double bounce, and said her Great Britain squad is entering with that as their clear goal.
"That's the goal, if you come to a tournament you're not just coming to make up the numbers," said Alderson-Smith. "You're coming to win and we're definitely here to win, and here to win gold."
Alderson-Smith is entering her seventh World Championship representing Great Britain. For each of those championships, however, Great Britain was stuck in Group IIB. Now, after winning promotion in Spain with a perfect 4-0 record where they outscored their opponents 18-1, Great Britain is ready for a new chapter.
"We said it before, I think we underperformed for a little while," said Great Britain head coach Mike Clancy. "We have got the belief in the group that they can perform a little bit higher than the level they're playing at now...expectations are high."
In preparation, Great Britain played in a Four Nations Cup and arrived several days in advance to practice and play warmup games against Poland and Kazakhstan. The added time in Taiwan prior to the tournament was a commitment from Ice Hockey Great Britain the women have not received in recent seasons.
"It's been a bit of a journey to get here to be quite honest..." said Clancy. "It's not every day we get to play teams like Poland and Kazakhstan in preparation...those preparation games for us are invaluable."
The competition level in Great Britain's women's program is also increasing. From traditionally centralizing only their roster, the national federation is now bringing together between 35-40 players for Team GB, increasing the competition to make Great Britain's roster.
"Teams of old from a GB perspective, I think those teams automatically selected themselves...we debated this team quite hard...everyone that's here deserves to be here," said Clancy.
Great Britain is a nation on the rise. Their current roster including six teenagers including four making their national team debut. The youngest is 16-year-old Scottish forward Ruby Newlands and 17-year-old Ellin Rees who captained Great Britain's U-18 team this year.