Rodrigo Garza


Rodrigo Garza Barbero is a retired field hockey defender/midfielder from Spain. He represented his native country at three consecutive Summer Olympics, starting in 2000.

Club career

After the Athens Games, where the Spain finished in fourth position, Garza moved to The Netherlands, where he joined HC Den Bosch in the Dutch Premier League, called Hoofdklasse. He moved on to national champions HC Bloemendaal in the spring of 2007, and became champion of premier Dutch league in the 2008 and 2009 season, winning also the European Hockey League in his last season with the club.
Since September 2009 he played for HGC, a Dutch team near The Hague, which is also in the Dutch Premier League.
Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, he started to play Hockey at his hometown school Colegio Valdeluz and then promoted through respective categories until reaching premier Spanish league "División de Honor" playing with San Pablo Valdeluz. He then moved to play for Club de Campo Villa de Madrid before arriving to the Netherlands.

International career

Garza has been many times junior and senior champion and runner up in both field and indoor Hockey, participating in several Euro championships: Padova, Barcelona, Leipzig and Manchester. He has participated in two Hockey World Cups in Kuala Lumpur and Mönchengladbach. He achieved a major success by winning the first Champions Trophy for Spain in 2004 at the National Hockey Stadium in Lahore, Pakistan and ending runner up in 2008 edition celebrated in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.