Barbadian hockey player Joanna “JoJo” Davis has been reaping success with the East Grinstead women’s team in south-east England.
Davis, 27, who has represented Barbados at Commonwealth and Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games, played an instrumental role in helping East Grinstead earn promotion to the Premier Division this season in the Maxifuel Super Sixes Women’s Championships.
Shortly after their promotion to the highest level of indoor hockey competition they will ever play, Davis, who was elevated to the captaincy in the absence of the injured Kate Cowlard, urged her teammates to make it a double promotion this season by also winning the outdoor competition.
“The momentum is keeping us going and the success we have had indoors is driving us forward in the outdoor game,” she said in an interview with the East Grinstead Courier & Observer newspaper.
“We always want to make it a double. You play sport to win and we want to keep winning,” Davis added.
“As a squad we are confident in our ability but it is a long season, so you have just got to use that confidence on the pitch to do what you have got to do and try to win.”
However, she acknowledged it would be a tough task for Grinstead to do the double following the winter break, with crucial away matches against title rivals Hampstead and Westminister and Epsom.
“We are trying to come back strong in the second half of the season.
“We didn’t do it last year but we are determined to do so this year,” said Davis, who plays in the forward line for Grinstead.
“No game is an easy game. In sport if you don’t turn up, then you can easily lose the game.
“We just have to keep our focus and it is important to keep the momentum going,” she added.
Following a 3-1 victory over Woking in their first game after the winter break, Davis said she is enjoying her role as skipper.
“We played quite well together as a unit and everyone worked hard. It is all about keeping the girls together and being that leader on the pitch and I enjoy that,” she said.
Davis comes from a hockey family with her mother Anita and father Richard as well as brother Ryan all having represented local club All Stars.
Off the field, the Combermere old scholar who left Barbados in 2001 after gaining a hockey scholarship to Seaford College in Sussex, is a teacher in England.
She also studied at Brunel University between 2003 and 2006 and graduated with a degree in financial computing.
