Hockey: Abigail Doolan and Alice Arnott named in 2021 National Women's Development Squad

Now all the hard work she put in off the back of that has come to fruition with the Tamworth export being named in the 2021 women's National Development Squad (NDS).

Doolan and fellow former Tamworth star Alice Arnott are among 12 new faces in the 24-athlete squad, and a step closer to realising their dreams of playing for the Hockeyroos.

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As part of the squad they will train at their home National Training Centre (NTC) under the guidance of the national program coaches. Border restrictions permitting, they may also be invited to train with the Hockeyroos squad in Perth.

Learning she had made the NDS squad was a nice surprise.

With the pandemic resulting in the cancellation of pretty much all representative hockey last year, Doolan said she hadn't been expecting it to be announced so soon.

"I presumed I would need to put my best foot forward for Hockey One, and to play in that and perform well," she said.

An exciting opportunity, the former Waratahs star now can't wait to hook into the season.

"I'm really looking forward to this year," she said.

"Last year obviously with COVID I didn't really get the opportunity to be looked at, but I was training so hard with NSWIS every chance I could."

"I think with this selection it does show that I had been training well and putting in the effort to make some changes in my game."

From a technical perspective more about fine-tuning a few things, probably the biggest change has been her approach to training.

"I think what lockdown taught me is not taking your circumstance for granted. In that situation I really just became grateful for the opportunities that I've been given and so every single training session I tried to be really diligent and have a specific thing I wanted to get out of the session," the 22-year old said.

"Sometimes training five days a week and playing on Sunday's it can be easy to go through the motions. I tried to turn up to every session with purpose, and I think that helped me a lot because I was a lot more motivated and I started getting the improvements because I was applying myself to every session."

Involved in the Future Pride camp late last year, Doolan is hoping to make her Hockey One debut this year.

The competition is scheduled to start on October 1.

Between now and then, she will suit up for Northern Districts in the Sydney women's competition, which hits off this weekend.

It is her third season with the club after making the move to Sydney for the hockey opportunities down there.

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