ICE HOCKEY: England U14s call-up for Rhodes

Rhodes Mitchell-King, who has played for Coventry Blaze Ice Hockey Academy since 2010, has gained selection for this season’s England Under 14 Ice Hockey Team.

The Dunchurch youngster plays mainly as a defender, but is well known for his offensive skills and has a widely regarded slap shot from the blue line.

He trains regularly at the Skydome and plays games all over the northern part of England as Coventry is deemed a northern club by the English Ice Hockey Association.

This latest EIHA selection for Rhodes follows on from playing for the England Under 13 team in Quebec, Canada last February where the England team played 11 games over 13 days ending with seven wins, two draws and only two defeats.

In their two tournament games, in the International C competition, they won the first one match 7-2 and then narrowly lost the second game 6-5 to a goal in the last 9 seconds! The team who beat them went on to win the Int. C final.

The only other team who defeated England in an exhibition game, went on to win their Int. B final.

Both of England’s tournament games took place in the amazing brand new 18,500 seater Videotron Centre, providing all modern facilities.

These included large changing rooms, full catering provision, video replay scoreboard and all the razzmatazz of the North American sports experience).

This year the EIHA England Under 14 team will visit Prague in Czech during the Easter holidays.

The selection process took place at trial camps last August, October and December since when the final team has just been announced. There will be a training camp for the team where final preparations will be made before the trip to Prague.

Rhodes has previously also represented the Midlands Under 11 & 13 teams at European tournaments and against the other Conferences at the UK Inter-Conference Tournament (North, Scotland, South West & South East).

Trialling and training for Midlands teams involves a monthly overnight (11pm-1am) session at Nottingham.