Indian women’s hockey team aims to capture their first Junior Asia Cup championship

When they begin their campaign at the Junior Asia Cup hockey competition, which gets underway here on Saturday, the Indian women will want to emulate the success of their male counterparts.

To win the Asia Cup on Thursday night in Salalah, Oman, the Indian junior men’s team beat Pakistan 2-1.

And the Indian junior women’s team will be keen to win the Asia Cup for the first time, much as the men’s team did.

On Saturday, India will play its first game against Uzbekistan.

The FIH Junior Women’s World Cup will take place later this year, and the women’s Junior Asia Cup, which ends on June 11, will qualify players for it.

Notably, the top three teams in the FIH Junior Women’s World Cup, which will be held in Santiago, Chile from November 29 to December 10, will get automatic qualifying.

India, captained by Preeti, is in Pool A with four-time winners Korea, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, and Chinese Taipei, while Pool B’s other teams include the hosts Japan, China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Hong Kong China.

In the last seven iterations of the competition, India has taken home a silver and four bronze medals.

The team has worked hard over the last several months to prepare for this competition, and we are now ready to put everything we have worked on during training sessions into action, stated captain Preeti while discussing the squad’s preparedness.

Additionally, the senior India squad trained alongside us on the same facility, which benefited us and increased our confidence.

The top two teams from each pool advance to the semifinals after a single-leg round-robin round, while the third and fourth-place teams compete for the fifth to eighth-rank classification.

The ninth and tenth berths will be decided amongst the teams who place fifth in both pools.

After Uzbekistan, India will play Malaysia on June 5, then face Korea on June 6, and then Chinese Taipei on June 8.