The Ultimate Guide to Field Hockey Kit in South Africa
Field hockey kit has come a long way from stiff cotton polos and heavy pleated skirts. Today's South African hockey players — from U9 club juniors to Premier League Astro warriors — expect their hockey kit to move like a second skin, wick sweat on a 32-degree Highveld afternoon, and survive turn after turn on abrasive Astro turf. In this guide we break down every piece of the modern hockey clothing range, explain the fabric technology behind Untamed Gear's sublimated hockey kit, and help you assemble a match-day loadout that performs from the first push-back to the final whistle.
The Anatomy of a Modern Hockey Kit
A full field hockey kit for a South African player typically includes six pieces: a hockey dress or hockey shirt (for team match play), a hockey skort or hockey shorts, hockey tights for cooler weather or extra protection, shin skins to sleeve over shin guards, a mouth guard, and a stick. Boys and men's hockey kits swap the dress for a matching shirt-and-short set, while girls' and women's hockey kit centres on dresses and skorts.
Because the sport is played on abrasive Astro turf, every piece of your hockey clothing takes more punishment than the same piece in netball or rugby. Untamed Gear's hockey range is engineered specifically for South African Astro conditions — the polyester weight, the seam construction, and the sublimation process are all calibrated for hard-turn wear.
Hockey Dresses: The Match-Day Centrepiece
The hockey dress is the flagship piece of any girls' or women's hockey kit. It combines a fitted top with a built-in skort layer, giving players full coverage and complete freedom of movement in one integrated garment. Untamed Gear's Pink Surge Dress, Teal Floral Dress and other bold sublimated designs (R490) are all cut on the same base pattern — a slim-fit top with a flared skort layer sitting comfortably above the knee.
What separates a proper hockey dress from a generic sports dress? Three things: 4-way stretch fabric (the top has to allow full arm rotation during reverse-stick play), anti-ride hemming on the skort layer (so it doesn't creep up during a scrap for the ball), and flatlock stitching at every seam (which stops chafing during long games). Untamed Gear builds all three into every dress in the range.
Hockey Skorts & Shorts: The Match-Play Bottoms
If you're playing a match where your team requires a matching shirt-and-bottom combo instead of a dress, your bottom is either a hockey skort (girls / women's kit) or hockey shorts (boys / men's kit). Untamed Gear stocks both in the same sublimated performance-polyester range — from bold prints like Aqua Leopard and Cosmic Boom to the more understated navy and black options preferred by school kits.
Look for a skort with an integrated inner short (not a separate under-short pinned to the waistband — that pulls loose during play), a waistband width of at least 3cm (narrower bands roll and dig in during sprints), and a small back-pocket for a mouth guard at match time. Every Untamed Gear skort ships with all three by default.
Hockey Tights & Shin Skins: The Winter and Astro Layers
South African hockey is played year-round, and by mid-June a chilly early-morning fixture on the Highveld can drop into single-digit temperatures. That's where hockey tights come in. Full-length compression tights add warmth without restricting movement, protect legs from stick-hit welts, and provide graduated compression to reduce muscle fatigue over 60 minutes of play.
Untamed Gear stocks hockey tights for women & girls in sizes 5-6 Yrs through XL (R250) in both plain black and sublimated designs. All are cut from squat-proof performance polyester — so you can bend, twist and turn without any transparency issues.
Shin skins are the sleeved sock-tights that go OVER your shin guards. They keep the guards from slipping during play, hide unsightly guard branding when your team requires a specific colour, and add an extra layer between your skin and any errant stick contact. Untamed Gear stocks shin skins in Small / Medium / Large across a range of colours.
Hockey Shirts & Vests: The Men's and Boys' Range
The boys' and men's side of a hockey kit is built around a lightweight sublimated hockey shirt. Cut from 150gsm performance polyester with side-panel ventilation, an Untamed Gear hockey shirt is engineered to shed heat during the running-heavy first quarter and dry fast after any water breaks. Racer-back vests are also popular for training and casual match-play, offering full shoulder mobility for reverse-stick shots and long aerial passes.
Sublimation vs Screen Printing: Why It Matters for Your Hockey Kit
Every piece of Untamed Gear hockey clothing uses full-garment sublimation, not screen printing. Here's why that matters:
Sublimation uses heat and pressure to fuse the design INTO the fabric fibres. The result: designs that never crack, peel, fade or wash out — even after 200+ Astro sessions. The fabric feels the same across the whole garment (no plastic-coated printed patches), and the design covers 100% of the surface (front, back, sleeves, hem — all one continuous artwork).
Screen printing, by contrast, sits on top of the fabric. After 20-30 washes on a South African Astro-club schedule, screen prints start to crack and flake. That's why cheaper hockey kits look tired by mid-season — the design literally falls off. Untamed Gear kits look as sharp in November as they did in the January launch.
How to Get the Right Size the First Time
The number one reason hockey players return kit is a bad fit. To avoid it, use two tools on the Untamed Gear site:
1. The Fit Predictor. On every product page you'll find a small height + weight (or age, for youth items) input. It maps your measurements to the best-fit size for that specific product, respecting each garment's actual size range. For dresses, skorts and tights it uses a slimmer women's/girls' cutting band; for shirts and vests it uses a slightly relaxed apparel band.
2. The Size Guide. Every product page and every category page has a Size Guide & Fit Predictor button that opens a full chart with chest, waist, hip and length measurements for each size. Alongside the chart is a "How to Measure" diagram showing exactly where to run your tape measure.
Between the two, most players nail the fit on the first order. If in doubt on borderline measurements, size up on shirts / vests and true-to-size on dresses / skorts.
Building Your Full Untamed Gear Hockey Kit
Here's how a typical South African hockey player kits themselves out with Untamed Gear:
Girls U14 club player: One Pink Surge Dress (R490), one pair of hockey tights (R250) for winter fixtures, one pair of shin skins (R180). Total: R920, everything sublimated to match her team colours.
Women's Premier League player: Two match dresses in different prints (R980), one skort for training days (R380), one pair of black performance tights (R250), two pairs of shin skins in different colours. Total: R1,790 — full season kit.
Boys club player: One sublimated hockey shirt + matching hockey shorts (~R620 combined), one racer-back vest for training (R280), one pair of shin skins (R180). Total: R1,080.
Team Kits & Bulk Orders
Kitting out a full school or club team? Untamed Gear runs a Colour-Match Team Order service. Fill in the team-code form on any hockey product page and you'll get a unique TEAM-XXXX code that gives everyone in your squad 10% off, valid for 30 days. For fully custom kits with names, numbers and school badges, the Bulk Order form gets you a same-day WhatsApp quote.
The Bottom Line
A great hockey kit is the difference between a player who's thinking about her uniform and a player who's thinking about the game. Untamed Gear's sublimated hockey range is engineered specifically for South African Astro conditions — bold enough to make you feel unstoppable, durable enough to survive a full season, and priced to fit a school-parent budget. Whether you're kitting out a U9 daughter or an SPAR League team of 22, everything you need to build a full match-day loadout is one click away.