A teenage hockey player has been honoured with selection to play at a national level.

Amy Shaw, aged 17, impressed the England assessors and coaches during her time at the HiPAC training programme, leading to her claiming one of the highly sought-after spots in the Advanced Award in Sporting Excellence (AASE) programme.

Only the top three per cent of under 18s make it to this stage of England Hockey’s Player Pathway, which involves more than 15,000 young hockey players across the country.

If Amy impresses during her time with the programme, she has the opportunity to play in international tournaments with the England team.

To reach this level of competition, it has been a long journey for the Truro High School for Girls student, who has excelled at regional and national hockey tournaments over the last few years in order to be selected.

This time last year her impressive performances at Tier 1 regional tournaments saw her selected as one of the 72 girls chosen out of the UK’s top 300 sportswomen to train with the HiPAC programme. Amy was the only player from Cornwall to have made it through to this level of competition.

Alongside the country’s best players, Amy then attended a three-day high performance assessment camp (HiPAC) at the Olympic training centre in Telford National age group selectors then selected the country’s most promising young female players to train with the AASE programme with the promise of international competition to come.

Amy, from Helston, will now attend four national camps as part of the programme and receive training and performance support from England coaches, including nutrition, psychology and lifestyle advice as well as high quality technical and tactical coaching sessions with one-to-one support.

Amy plays for Falmouth Hockey Club alongside her Junior Regional Performance Centre commitments. She spends up to 12 hours on the pitch every week.