Rourkela: Emily Calderon is one of the most successful analyst the Belgium National Hockey team has got, with the Red Lions having won Olympic Gold medals, World Cup Trophy, European Championships titles with her as part of the team.
Having nearly spent a decade with the Belgium team, Emily in December joined the Hyderabad Toofans team as their Assistant Coach and has been in the forefront helping the team reach the semifinals of the Hockey India League (HIL).
When asked about her challenges and what the Toofans did different from other teams in the league Emily said “the biggest difference between training the national team and the (Toofans) is that in Belgium as a National team we train 2-3 times a week the whole year, so you have a lot of time to get (the team together) them here, but here I think I saw the team on the 9th of December and we are less than two months from that date and almost at the end of the tournament. So, we had to a lot of things to do very quickly in a very short time.”
She then goes on to add, “there was a phase (just before the start of the tournament) we only trained with the domestic Indian players and I think that is where we won a lot of advantage as we got to know them and express our version of the game to them. Then post a little break we had foreign (players) also come in for the sessions and out team was complete. But I believe that 1st week we had with only the domestic players really helped us get the advantage for the start of the tournament.”
She also went on to talk about Toofan’s captain Amit Rohidas and Odisha’s Anand Lakra as part of the team and how they help with bringing the crowd behind the them.
“I think the experience (of Rourkela) is really nice, we have two players (Amit and Anand) who are from here and thus it is always fun to see their families and they are bringing extra people to support our team, so that we feel that the crowd is really behind us and I think it really helps the players prepare well and they feel at home here. I think everyone feels well here as everything that needs to be prepared here for us (the team) at Rourkela is perfect, be it the food, the hotel and we have everything that we need here to perform well”
After 10 matches the Hyderabad Toofans have 19 points with five wins. After the end of league matched Toofans enter semi final and meet Soorma Hockey club , Punjab where Toofans win with 3-1 goals. The Final match will be between Toofans and Shrachi Bengal Tigers on Saturday evening. The match is likely to be thrilling one as thousands of hockey lovers likely to witness the evening.
