CITY of York Hockey Club have become the first club in North Yorkshire to receive England Hockey's First Club award.

The award, part of the Sport England Clubmark Scheme award, is a feather in the cap for the eight-year-old club.

Club chairman Nigel Herd said "Securing the award is absolutely fundamental to our planned future development. We are now much better placed to progress the youth development work and maintain our strong relationships with schools in the city. Greater funding opportunities are also now open to us.

"The success in gaining this award is down to a combination of hard work by a small, dedicated group of volunteers who have laid some solid foundations for the club to build upon in the future, together with some invaluable support from local England Hockey representatives."

City of York HC was founded in 1998 as a result of the merger of York HC and York Trojans HC - both male only clubs.

Three years later York Ladies HC became part of the overall structure and there has been great emphasis on youth development and coaching at the club.

Each weekend, City of York HC puts out nine men's teams, four ladies' teams, numerous youth teams in county, district and regional league competition fixtures and a mixed team that plays occasional games.

During the week, coaching and training sessions take place for senior players and as many as 230 youngsters turn up for coaching sessions

The club also organises the annual Peter Feasby Primary Schools' hockey rally in conjunction with City of York Council's education department. Last year it involved 28 schools.

City of York HC has 31 qualified coaches - double what it had two years ago.

The last three years have seen promotion by ten teams in the senior ranks although this season has seen three teams drop back - including the men's first team.

This year the Under-16 girls won the Yorkshire Youth League play-offs, the U13 Girls got to the North Minis finals, the U13, U11 boys and U11 girls reached the Yorkshire mini finals.

Representative honours have been gained by Lucy Butcher (Wales U18), Amelia Smalley (England U16), Heather Stafford (North U15) and Tom Feasby (North East U13 and U14) and several others have played at county level.

Updated: 09:28 Tuesday, April 25, 2006