Jamie Dwyer

He met Leoni, a fellow hockey player, while playing professional hockey in the Netherlands. The couple married in 2008 and has two sons.

Jamie Dwyer was born on 12 March 1979 in a small town in Queensland, Australia. His parents used to play hockey and introduced him to the game when he was just four.

Growing up in Queensland, he also loved to play cricket. In fact he had a general interest in all kinds of sports including football, though he was most passionate about hockey and cricket.

When he was 15 he had to make a difficult choice. He was offered a cricket scholarship which would require him to move to Brisbane and abandon playing hockey. But he had a dream of playing hockey at the Olympics and accepting the scholarship would mean giving up him Olympic dream. He declined the scholarship and chose instead to chase his Olympic dream.

After finishing high school at 17 he moved to Brisbane and began to pursue his Olympic dream in earnest. He was chosen for the Queensland Blades team and eventually made his way into the Hockey AIS (Australian Institute of Sports) in Perth in 1999.

Even though he could not make it to the team for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, he was selected into the Australian men’s hockey team after the games.

He made his debut for Australia in 2001 and soon proved his worth to the hockey fraternity by his impeccable playing style and high energy. When he was offered a range of jersey numbers to choose from, he had no second thoughts about choosing #1—because that was what he aspired to be.

After a fabulous season playing 34 matches in which he scored 24 goals, he was named as Young Player of the Year by the International federation FIH in 2002.

In 2002, he part of the Australian team that played in the World Cup; the Australian team won the silver medal. The same year Australian team of which he was a member won a gold medal at the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

He was part of the Australian men’s hockey team which participated at the 2004 Summer Olympics and won Australia’s first ever gold medal in men’s hockey.

In 2006, he represented Australia at the Commonwealth Games where he won a gold medal, a feat repeated at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. He also won a gold medal at the 2010 Men’s Hockey World Cup.

He has been named FIH World Hockey Player of the Year an astounding five times: 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011.