“It’s a thrilling sport and an extreme sport,” said the Island’s youngest field hockey goalkeeper, 16-year-old Latonia Fray.“You have to have a lot of passion to play it. You have a lot of fun, too — and every year you can travel to different places. You gain friendships with your team and other teams. And it’s an easy game to pick up. It’s not hard to hit a ball with a stick.”The captain of her team, the Budgies, Latonia has been getting autograph requests since she got her own Bermuda Stars Sports Card.Sports a bruise over her eye from a recent match with the Bluebirds, the Saltus SGY1 student enthused to The Royal Gazette of her 3-1 victory last month against men’s team the Spartans, and scoring her first goals against the Wildcats.Aside from the team building and the travel, what she loves in the game is “to chuck on my pads, go out there and slide people off their feet”.Now, courtesy of her National Junior Sponsorship Award for $2,835, the Smiths teen will train with the best over this summer, at an elite goalie programme held at Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna University.The award, from the Department of Youth Sport and Recreation, was presented to her earlier this year courtesy of the Bermuda Hockey Federation.Latonia’s team, the youngest in its league, brings new blood to a sport still dominated by women and with increasingly older players.“Most of the players on our team are from the junior and senior national teams,” she said. “We’re used to playing with each other, and we’re good at knowing who wants the ball where. We go forward as a team and defend as a team.”She has played in Uruguay and Puerto Rico, and last summer faced Brazil in the Pan American Cup Challenge.“We came last but we shot some goals and didn’t take a slamming,” she recalled. “With Uruguay, they were a top team and our team was expected to get beaten 11-nil. We narrowed it to six and didn’t let them score in the last 15 minutes.”Keen on experiencing styles of play overseas, Latonia chose the sport over dancing, her earlier pursuit, because “hockey takes you places that dancing doesn’t”.“We’ve played against most Caribbean teams and a couple of South America. You get a feel for the different cultures. In America they play hockey fast. Uruguay also play like a hot potato, but they have a lot of different plays. The Netherlands play like geniuses.”Latonia made headlines a few weeks after appearing in Magistrates’ Court, when she successfully got her name cleared after being charged with illegally using an iPod while driving her bike.Asked how she’d been able to argue on her feet before Senior Magistrate Archibald Warner, she laughed: “Being a lawyer was something I considered, once upon a time. With this, I just printed out all the different laws and went after the mistakes I could find with my ticket.“When it comes to law I had a mentor, Alice Wheatley, a national goalkeeper as well, and from her I could tell there’s a lot of stress in law. Maybe I could go somewhere like corporate law, but I’d like to study business and finance.”Hockey could be a ticket to an athletics scholarship in the US, but despite its central place in her life, Latonia calls it a hobby.“I’ll be a goalkeeper for our women’s team long-term. Then, along with my other team mates, we have to take responsibility for managing and coaching in Bermuda, and recruiting people into the game. “Useful websites: www.bhf.bm, www.panamhockey.org, www.susqu.edu.