HOCKEY - Coaching role thrills Waetford

Waetford was disappointed not to be accepted back for a second year as Northland coach but now sees it as a step forward
The saying that every cloud has a silver lining is beginning to gain more substance with hockey coach Angeline Waetford.
After somewhat controversially being dropped from the position as Northland women's NHL coach after only one year in the job, Waetford's recent good fortune has begun to outweigh her misfortune.
Last week her coaching ability was recognised at a national level when she was named New Zealand women's under-16 coach.
"I was quite chuffed to be invited to coach the team, I thought I might be offered the assistant coach's job so I was fairly surprised when they asked me to be head coach," Waetford said.
"It's a positive for me and I guess I wouldn't have been able to do it if I was still coaching NHL, because the series is in the first week of October."
Waetford said she was initially disappointed not to be accepted back for a second year as Northland coach but now sees it as a step forward in her career.
"If I am to learn from my mistakes, how am I expected to do that if you don't get another chance? So yes, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed at the time ... but when you go for a job like this you always know there's a chance you might not get it, so I wasn't completely unprepared.
"But in hindsight it worked out pretty well for me - I've been able to go and watch Alana (Millington, Waetford's daughter) play and at that stage I didn't know she was going to be picked for the Black Sticks," she said.
Waetford is interested in having another go at provincial coaching in the future but in the meantime is beginning to look forward to what she can do with the New Zealand under-16 team.
"It will be a bit of a challenge to me and it will be quite exciting to be working with a new bunch of girls that I don't really know that well," she said.
There are three Northland players in the team that are well known to Waetford - Jade McLeod, Stacey Michelsen and Samantha Harrison - and another who has a far less obvious connection.
"There's another Northland connection with Sian Fremaux, who plays for Canterbury now but was born here in Northland.
"I used to play hockey with her mother, so I'm looking forward to seeing her again," Waetford said.
The under-16s play a three-match series against the Queensland under-16s in the second week of the September-October school holidays.
It's a short series because of the need for several of the young players to make themselves available for National Hockey League duties at the end of the week.
At present Waetford is concentrating on her Whangarei Girls' High School team as they work their way towards the defence of their Northland Premier League and Federation Cup titles.
She is expecting the team to make the top four at the Federation Cup, which starts in Christchurch on August 27, but after that it is anyone's guess how the team will do.
"It will be a bit different defending the title this year and we'll be without Charlotte (Harrison) as well but we've still got a very strong team and we just play differently when we haven't got her," Waetford said.
Whangarei Girls' High School play Kamo High School at 3.20pm in the Northland Premier League tomorrow and Maungakaramea take on old rivals Hikurangi at 1.50pm. The other match in the Premier League features Old Girls and United Kawakawa, tonight at 7.20pm.
Maungakaramea play Bream Bay United in the Men's Premier League at 4.50pm tomorrow, while Springfield play Mangapai at 3pm on Sunday to get the Springfield 75th Jubilee celebrations underway.