Hockey is looking to extend its boundaries as it seeks to safeguard its future. While the game is still played in schools in most districts in Scotland, there remain areas to be conquered.

To achieve this, Scottish Hockey, the game’s governing body, is looking to clubs to take the lead in providing a pathway for the best schools players to graduate into the best senior players.

Scottish Hockey has five full-time regional development officers and one part-time officer to pull the strings and help build bridges between schools and clubs. Colleen Reid took over six months ago as national youth development officer at the governing body and has the task of attempting to draw the strands together.

One area of the country which is not a hockey stronghold is the Borders, where there are no senior men’s clubs and just six women’s clubs. Mrs Reid is hoping that a senior men’s club will be established in the area before too long to act as a focal point for any promising male players and to provide another source of talent.

Ideally, a mixed men’s and women’s club would provide the best of both worlds and help the game prosper in the area.

“I don’t know why there are no men’s clubs but there are probably a number of factors, one of them being the strength of rugby in the area,” says Mrs Reid.

“A couple of our East clubs are currently using the facilities in East Lothian - at Meadowmill in Tranent - and we are hoping that having clubs playing closer to the Borders will help things.

“Establishing a club in the Borders is something we are actively looking at, as it is an obvious area of growth.

“There are other areas as well and it can be frustrating if there is interest in the game from youngsters at school but then there are no organised clubs in their area to go to and they end up losing interest.”

While the number of schools and junior clubs registered in Scotland has risen slightly to around 100, there is concern that the number of senior players has dropped off and some established clubs have folded.

This has happened simply because of the natural ageing process and they have not addressed the problem of bringing youth through. So it is vital to the future of the sport that schools continue to play the game.

“I think when the players became too old, there was nothing coming behind them and clubs suffered from a lack of players,” Mrs Reid points out.

“Without a junior section at the club to provide a future, there were not enough players to keep it going.”

Scottish Hockey, like many sports bodies, is looking closely at the grass roots to provide its future well-being and is keen to catch them young.

It is helpful that hockey is played both indoors and out, but few primary school gym halls are big enough to accommodate the game. Resource packs are available to primary schools which offer videos, posters and skills routines on the small-sided version of the game.

The association also holds a supply of “unihoc” sticks - effectively mini sticks - for primary schools to use, but most schools have suitable equipment to play the game.

Hockey is thriving in the traditional strongholds of Glasgow and Tayside and there are still a lot of inter-school matches taking place, although Scottish Hockey has tended in recent years to put the emphasis on youth as opposed to schools, and attempted to forge the school-club links.

Bringing the boys and girls under one banner has also taken time and there are moves to bring the number of boys’ districts up from five (Highlands, North, Midlands, East and West) to seven, to bring them into line with their female counterparts (Highlands, North, Midlands, East, West, South and South West).

Last weekend the Under-16 girls’ inter-district tournament at Ross High in Tranent attracted all seven districts and an Under-18 tournament was staged at Meadowmill Sports Centre (the boys’ events will be staged in March).

It is through the district tournaments that the international players of the future graduate and Scottish Hockey believes it has a fail-safe method of identifying talent.

Samantha Judge, who now plays for Western, played semi-professionally in Holland and Laurence Docherty, the current Scotland Under-21 captain, has a paid contract at Klein Switzerland in Holland.

There are also opportunities for scholarships to American universities with colleges on the eastern seaboard particularly keen on the game.

So there is no shortage of chances for the most talented players to progress if they come through from the schools game.