Meet two hockey players. One has a trophy cabinet brimming with trophies, mostly gold, including Olympic medals and World Cup medals; the other has a solitary bronze medal from the 2011 Pan Am Games. But both players share many traits: they are long serving members of their respective teams; despite the longevity of their service they are always seeking to improve their game; they are out and out team players; and their passion for hockey has not diminished over the years.
Carla Rebecchi and Raimundo Valenzuela are two players who have been the mainstay of their teams for more than a decade, and both have dreams and ambitions for this year’s edition of the Pan American Games.
For Carla, currently on more than 225 caps for Argentina, the forthcoming Pan-American Games is both a chance to regain the crown they lost to the USA in 2011 and a second chance to qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympics, if by chance they fail to qualify through the Hockey World League Semi Finals in June this year.
Raimundo, the Chile captain, has represented his country more than 120 times at senior level and was part of the U21 squad that participated in the Junior World Cup in 2005. For him, this year’s Games is all about equaling or possibly bettering the bronze medal that Chile won in 2011.
The Pan American women’s hockey scene has been dominated in recent years by the increasingly tight matches between Team USA and Argentina. Now ranked fifth and third respectively, both teams have been main players on the world stage. Team USA won friends and plaudits for their attacking, innovative play and incredible team spirit at both the Champions Challenge 1 in Glasgow in 2014 and then a few months later at the Hockey World Cup.
Argentina won bronze at that World Cup, beating USA to a medal position. But for the USA, the result signified a huge jump forwards – the team had entered the competition ranked 11th in the world – while Argentina would have liked to have been contesting the gold medal.
At a recent four-match tests series, the honors were even, while in an eight-nation tournament in New Zealand, the teams will only meet if they both make it to the final. While that would be a tense affair, the encounters at both the HWL Semi Finals in Valencia and the Pan Am Games in Toronto promise to be epic.
Rebecchi is fulsome in her praise of her rivals. “I think that USA is a very good team that has improved a lot in the past few years and it's not going to be easy to win, it's always going to be a very tough game against them.
“Both tournaments (HWL Semi Finals and Pan Am Games) are going to be tough challenges because every team is looking for the qualification to the Olympics, but we are training and preparing well.
The Argentine side has a number of new players, and coach Santiago Capurro is using events such as the New Zealand Hawkes Bay Festival of Hockey as a chance to integrate his players into the team.
At the time of writing, Argentina had lost the quarter-finals in Hawkes Bay to Australia, but Rebecchi was sanguine about this: “I think it came down to luck, we had plenty of chances, but also our players are learning. As we move forwards, the experienced players in the squad will be very important, but also those players who are more ‘intermediate’, they have to step up and be the base of the team. But the young players, they are the future, we need to build and develop.”
Of course, the watching world will want to know how Las Leonas are faring without Luciana Aymar. The superstar midfielder retired after Argentina won the 2014 Champions Trophy and Rebecchi doesn’t hide her sadness. “It's not the same without her, both on the pitch and off the pitch. She was such a huge part of our team, and she played so many years. It is difficult to play without her.”
But Rebecchi knows that there is enough talent in the squad for the blue and white strip to win many more trophies, and she also knows that she is one of the players the new recruits will be looking to for inspiration. “I want to give the best I have for the team. I want to be very well trained for that and also to score goals to help the team win. But it is about the team, we are a team that always plays 100 percent. We run and fight for every ball. We have good players in every line, and that's very important.”
Raimundo Valenzuela’s passion for hockey shines through with every word he speaks. “I started playing when I was four years old and I have never stopped since.” He made the national U21 team when he was just 17 and was part of the team that qualified for the Junior World Cup in 2005 – where Chile finished in 15th place, beating Mexico in the last match.
He was made captain of the national team since 2012, and his ambition for this Pan-Am Games is to finish in bronze position. “I think it's going to be a very hard tournament. We have chances to win a medal but we have to play a perfect tournament. If we fail in any minor detail any other team will be able to beat us.”
Valenzuela identifies Argentina and Canada as the main contenders for the top medals, but he feels that there is a parity among the other teams. “I think Argentina and Canada should be in the medal zone. Besides them, I think USA, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba and Chile have similar possibilities to go for a medal. It will come down to who brings their best game on the day.”
Some of the Chile squad have been playing abroad – in Spain, Germany and Belgium – but now the whole squad is back in Chile and training together in preparation for the games. The squad trains together seven times a week, three spent working on technique and skills; two physical training and conditioning sessions; and two gym-based sessions. Even when the players are training overseas, they still try to stick to this program all year, working it in with their club training.
“We have a team that knows each other well,” says Valenzuela, “We still have a lot of work to do but we are going the right way. We played well in the World League Round 1 and 2 and in the South American Games where we won a silver medal (losing to Argentina in the final).”
When it comes to Chile’s key players in the Pan Am Games, Valenzuela points to Sven Richter and Martin Rodriguez, “both very talented players,” and the up and coming youngster Nicolas Renz. “But our biggest strength is the fact that we are a cohesive group of players and we have enormous capabilities to work as a team.”
By the time Rebecchi and Las Leonas arrive in Toronto they will know whether the Pan Am Games is also going to be their route to the Olympics, depending upon how they fared in the HWL Semi Finals in June. But, as Valenzuela and his Chile team know, the differences between the teams is getting less and, on the day, it is about which team brings their best game to the pitch.
