They are two of the youngest players of the Bathurst City team but 16-year-old Kelsey Willott and 15-year-old Esther Hotham are key members of the side and that was no more evident than in Saturday’s Premier League Hockey grand final where the two combined for a title winning goal.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Last year neither of them played in the grand final loss to St Pat’s and while the side lost the experience of Mardi Watts, Rebecca Lee and Donna Bateup in 2010, they gained the blistering speed and talent of Willott and Hotham.
City coach Jill Long has praised the duo along with Jess Hotham for the combination that has created so many goals and won so many games for the team during the season.
On Saturday she said it was their speed and fitness after 78 minutes of play that proved too much for the tired Pat’s defence.
“We finally broke away and in the 80th minute when everyone else is tired my three strikers are fast and when everyone else was starting to tire, those three took off all of a sudden and it’s hard to get back after playing 70 minutes straight,” the coach said.
Willott was the one who was able to put the ball into the back of the net to end the game and Pat’s hopes of successive grand finals.
Earlier in match she had to be patient while the Bathurst City defence held out the aggressive St Pat’s attack but when her chance came she took it, although she wasn’t so sure she had done enough until she saw the ball cross the goal line.
“The ball came into the circle and I didn’t even know it was coming to me. I just got a little touch on it. I thought it was going past the post and I was like ‘Oh go on, go in’ and it just rolled slowly but it went in and I didn’t even believe it,” she said excitedly after the game.
“I didn’t even think it was going to go in. I thought it was going wide but it went in eventually. That’s definitely the biggest goal of my career.”
The talented striker also nominated Saturday’s win as one of the best moments of her career so far because there were no guarantees they would come away with a title.
“I was definitely nervous. Nervous as soon as we knew we got into the grand final against Pat’s. We knew it would be hard because it’s a local derby and they have so many supporters.
“We wanted to come in as underdogs and show them what we really could do,” she said.
“We didn’t expect [to win the grand final] and it was very hard work to get here but it paid off. We had to do it the hard way and it definitely paid off.”
