Emily Dark on stand-by for Commonwealth Games place

The north east Fife student was this week named as part of the Scottish women’s hockey squad to represent Team Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in July.

Dark, who plays her club hockey with Watsonians, has been included as one of five reserves.

In May her goal for Watsonians in the Scottish Cup final secured a first hockey Scottish Cup and Premiership double for the Edinburgh side.

The Scotland squad will be captained by Borders-born Olympic bronze medallist Sarah Robertson.

There are nine players making their Commonwealth Games debut alongside nine players who played at Gold Coast.

Scotland has been drawn in Women’s Pool B with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Kenya in Birmingham.

The selected squad has 18 players, including GB internationalists, Amy Costello, Charlotte Watson, Jenny Eadie; and Fiona Burnet.

It’ll be a first Games experience for talented youngsters Bronwyn Shields, Ellie Wilson and Dark’s fellow Fifer Eve Pearson from Dunfermline.

Chris Duncan, head coach of the Scotland women’s squad, said: “I’m really excited.

"Obviously the selection period is very tough for so many reasons but from my perspective we have selected an extremely exciting squad.

"There’s balance across the squad in terms of different characteristics and personalities, which I think really bring things to life, and I really feel like we’ve picked an amazingly strong squad that allows us to go down to Birmingham and make a great account of ourselves.

“Our expectation is to go and play our brand of hockey and show our brand of hockey to the world.

"That’s the chance you have when you play on the world stage, which is something we don’t get all the time, so we’ll go down there with high hopes to show people what we can do.

"If we focus on process, and do the best we can, then results will take care of themselves.

The hockey competition runs from July 29 to August 8 at the University of Birmingham Hockey and Squash Centre.