My name is Izzy Petter, I’m 18 and I started playing hockey at the age of 5 at a small hockey academy called SJB run by Olympic Gold Medalist Steve Batchelor.

I am currently playing at Surbiton and I joined the club when I was 14. During my time in the Colts section we won 4 National Titles at U14, U16 and U18 level. My favourite memory of playing in the Colts is at the 2016 national finals where we won and I scored 16 goals overall. It was such a good feeling and I’ve never scored that many goals since! Playing for the first team was quite surreal as I was training with Olympic Gold Medalists who I had watched on TV and looked up to. Training at such a high level during the week really enabled me to improve and learn from other more experienced players. 

I also had a lot of fun playing my school hockey at Cranleigh where we won four National Titles. I really enjoyed hockey at school as it was a time where I could relax and be more free to play how I wanted to. Cranleigh was very supportive of my club hockey and enabled me to go out of school to train and also leave early on a Saturday to get to games which has ultimately enabled me to play at a higher level and become a better rounded player. 

I was selected at 14 to play for the England U16 team and I’m now involved in the GB EDP (Elite Development Programme) and England U21 programmes. I recently got a call up to the Senior Squad to play in a game against Ireland.  This was an amazing experience and came as a complete shock to me as I didn’t expect it at all. I really enjoyed the experience and felt that the EDP programme had really prepared me well for the step up. Also I have recently gone to China and Belgium with the GB EDP squad, I really enjoyed these trips as it allowed me to travel and see different parts of the world as I had never been to Asia before, it was quite an experience! Probably my favourite moment since playing for England has to be winning the bronze medal at the U18 Europeans in July 2018. We were up against Germany in the third fourth playoff who we hadn’t beaten as an U18 programme for 7 years, we were down two players due to illness which included one of our captains so even before the start of the match it wasn’t looking good. We were down 1-0 until the last quarter until we managed to snatch 2 goals and come away with the bronze medal. The feeling when the last whistle went is something I’ll never forget and is one of the reasons I play hockey as I believe you can never really get that feeling in any other walk of life.