Leeds Junior Knights' Jonas Bennett preparing to live Winter Olympics hockey dream with GB

The 14-year-old has been chosen for the GB team that will play a 3-on-3 tournament at the Winter Youth Olympic Games, which will be held in Gangwon from January 19-31.

Jonas has battled his way through a rigorous selection process for the Under-16 team, one which began just after Christmas last year, with an initial group of over 70 players being whittled down to a final 13, including two netminders.

GB will go head-to-head with Austria, China, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Poland and Spain in the round-robin stages, with the top four teams progressing to the semi-finals.

As the name suggests, the major difference from 3-on-3 to ‘regular’ ice hockey - such as that played by the likes of Leeds Knights - is that teams have just three skaters plus a goalie, as opposed to the usual five skaters and a goalie.

The Knights use 3-on-3 when games that are not decided in the regulation 60 minutes go to overtime.

In Gangwon, the shortened format – first used at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Switzerland – will see cross-ice matches taking place simultaneously.

Jonas, hails from Sheffield, but has played for the Junior Knights at Elland Road Ice Arena ever since it was formed in the summer of 2021.

Under the watchful eye of his coaching father, Seth, he took his first tentative hockey steps over in Altrincham with Manchester Storm Academy, which was the closest club to where he lived at the time. His dad was coach there and is also now head coach with the Junior Knights.

Jonas has already played at regional conference level and for England, as well in tournaments around the world, including most recently at a AAA tournament with an Elite British Selects team out in Chicago that reached the semi-finals.

He admits, however, that getting the nod to represent GB at such a prestigious event as the Olympics is “another level”.

“The Olympics is a really big deal, so it’s a massive honour for me,” said Jonas. “I’ve played in tournaments in Europe and America but this is on another level.

“I have followed GB at the World Championships for years and it’s what I’ve aspired to for as long as I can remember.”

The head coach of the GB team is former Sheffield Steelers, Nottingham Panthers and GB defenceman, Danny Meyers. Jonas admitted it had been a tough selection process to make the final cut.

“There was a lot of hard work and pressure and a lot of great players in the trials,” he added. “The competition was high as there were only 11 places for outskaters on the team. It’s an older age group for me and so I just had to play my game and hope I could show the coaches what they were looking for.

“The 3 on 3 format is a really different kind of hockey and there’s a lot of different information to process. I think that was a big focus of the trial process to see how quickly we could read and react to situations.”

And on GB’s chances of success, Jonas added: “If we go and play to our potential then we can definitely come back with a medal.

“I’ve played against some of the best players from the USA and Europe at tournaments and we’ve held our own and even won games against them. We know we can compete and we’re not far away from the level.”

Meyers admitted that the selection process had been tough, with some hard decisions having to be made on who did and didn’t make the final cut.

“It was important for us to differentiate the players from their three-on-three game to their five-on-five game,” said Meyers.

“A lot of thought went into the decision of the final team and we believe that we have assembled a group of players that will shine at different times when called upon, which gives us the flexibility in the team that we need.

“The games are just under two months away but that still gives us time to fine-tune our preparations. As a coaching staff, we have the upmost confidence in these players and we trust them.”