Otago University Hockey Club

About the Club

The Otago University Hockey Club is part of the Otago Hockey Association’s club competition which is played in Dunedin, New Zealand. The Club is made up of over 90 percent tertiary students, and is affiliated to the Otago University Students’ Association. However we welcome non-students wishing to play for our Club. The Club currently fields eight teams in various grades, which allows us to cater for all abilities.

Varsity is consistently one of the most competitive clubs in the competition. Our Premier Men’s and Women’s teams regularly appear in the competition finals, and the A Men, and C Women are currently the defending champions in their respective grades. Many of our players represent Otago or Southern in National age-group tournaments and the NHL as players, coaches and officials.

History

The Otago University Women's Hockey Club, which had been playing since 1904, was one of the six clubs to form the Otago Women's Hockey Association in 1906. The Otago University Men's Hockey Club is the only surviving club which took part in the first Otago Hockey Club matches in 1904. They won the competition every year until 1912. Since then the club has been extremely successful. The OHA's archives show that the Men's team have won the championships an unrivaled fifty times. Taking into account that records for 1912-1921 are missing, the number is probably even higher.

After long having a close relationship, the Men's and Women's Clubs formally amalgamated in 2003 and began the 2004 season as the unified Otago University Hockey Club.