IT has been a big few weeks for Bathurst teenage hockey star Kyle Reardon.

The Bathurst City player made his debut in the men’s Premier League Hockey competition in the side’s loss to Lithgow Zig Zag, he put away the first goal in their history and this week he has been part of the Western Combined High Schools side.

He helped Western into the final of the NSW CHS Championships where they were stopped by the powerhouse South Coast side.

Today he will run onto Bob Roach Field as City look for their first win in the competition when they host Parkes in round four.

Parkes are currently second-last on the competition ladder with two losses and a draw.

“It was a pretty good feeling to get that first one,” Reardon said of his diving effort against Souths last Saturday. He scored after a good pass from team-mate Tom Baker.

“That was probably our best performance of the three so far and the score showed that, we communicated a lot better than we had in the first two matches and we were just a bit better in general.

“We marked fairly hard too, which made it a bit tougher for Souths to score.”

Reardon, a Kelso junior, is on the same page as his coach Kevin Sherman when it comes to the goals set within the City team.

While the defeats have been heavy, he knows that it will take time for them to find their feet both individually and as a unit. Today’s game will just be another step in the process of becoming a top Premier League Hockey team.

“I know I was a bit nervous before the first game and most of the team probably were too, we’re a new side playing in a new division, so there was always going to be some nerves there,” Reardon said.

“I think we’ve played basically as well as we can under the circumstances. It is always going to take time and we’ve done a good job so far.

“It is a big step up from even this [CHS] standard, it is a lot less structured and that means you can sometimes struggle to adapt to what’s happening in front of you.”

While the City players haven’t had the chance to take on any of their opposition teams before, aside from the Souths and St Pat’s players who they meet in local A grade matches, they do know a little about them.

According to Reardon, it doesn’t have much of an impact on what he and his team-mates are doing.

“We’ve been watching these other teams like Parkes and the Lithgow sides coming to Bathurst for a few years now, so we do know a bit about how they play and who they’ve got in their side,” he said.

“But we are learning as we go because it is different when you get out there against them.

“The most important thing is that we just find our own brand of hockey that works for us, and then continue to build on it and improve it as we get more experience.”