Throughout the remainder of the week days we’ll be working with coaches, local club teams, the Southern Stampede, and adult recreational players in the evenings. That leaves us the daytime to explore this incredible part of the country. As we have mentioned time and again this week, we are blown away with the hospitality of the local hockey community. Monday’s adventures for us could not have happened without the generosity of Scott Reid, father of 10 year old Isaac, and long time resident here in Queenstown. When he told us on Sunday night that he’d be at our hotel (which we found an awesome groupon for here – https://www.groupon.com/coupons/stores/undercovertourist.com) at 11am Monday to take us for a bike ride, we somehow neglected to realize that a 2 hour ride along cliff edges, stream crossings, and 30km of rugged terrain is really just a ‘bike ride’ to a Kiwi on the South Island! It was for sure the most spectacular and challenging mountain biking experience that Boe and I have had.
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I’m probably not supposed to admit that here, as in Scott’s humble opinion we were on the easy trail. Maneuvering his full suspension bikes along the cliff’s edge with nothing but a air down 200m to the river below somehow ranks as ‘the easy trail’ in Scott’s twisted rating system. The only thing more humbling than our guide doubling back every few minutes to make sure Boe and I were still alive was his friendly sidekick named Stanley, an energetic mix of Springer, Lab, and rocket ship that clearly thought we should be riding much quicker up and down the rugged track. With mud up our backs and slightly wounded pride we made our way a few hours later to beautiful and quaint Arrowtown for a local’s lunch in a back yard cafe we never would have found on our own. While restoring our pride and energy at lunch, we ran into Scott’s friend Greg who runs Fat Tyre Adventures, a heli-biking outfit in Queenstown. We’re not sure we’re quite ready to explore the most remote areas of those mountains, but once my ego recovers from the pounding it took on the trail, I’ll surely consider giving Greg a call.
After a hot tub and nap back at the hotel (sponsored generously by Donna Stuart at Peppers Beacon) we spent the evening with 20 coaches from Queenstown and surrounding areas. Off ice we discussed the challenges insights in running a successful youth hockey practice. We followed this quick 30 minute session with a 60 minute ice session and ran the coaches through a typical Leslie skills session. We’d had the opportunity to chat with many coaches leading into the Monday evening session, and recognize that coaches here in New Zealand face many of the exact same challenges that coaches face in Canada, the United States, and all over the world. It’s these exact challenges that led us to the creation of our Complete Season manual and Hockey Drills Apps.
Global Youth Hockey Coaching Challenges:
- Managing a range of skill and ability
- Keeping kids engaged
- Maximizing ice time
- Working together as a team of coaches
- Making practice fun and competitive for kids
- Teaching skills
- Balancing skill development with team tactics
Our Advice on Coaching a Great Hockey Practice:
- Start and end practice with a game/competition to get players engaged and energized
- Divide the ice into stations to maximize coach involvement, divide the players by ability, make use of the entire ice surface, keep players moving, and improve player-coach ratios for more individualized feedback
- Remember that above all, we need to make sure kids are eager to come back to the rink each day
- Keep each drill to 2-3 key teaching points
- Don’t waste time talking, get the drill going and keep kids engaged
- Manage work to rest ratio by running multiple players at once
- Limit time kids spend inactive as this can lead to distraction and loss of focus
- Evolve skating drills into races to challenge comfort levels and increase the competitive level
- Put the kids’ interests first, and stick to what you believe in
We hope that the coaches found the evening a valuable experience. We really enjoy sharing our thoughts and ideas with youth coaches, and only wish we could have more time to do so. The evening flew by, and we thank all those coaches that took the time to join us. We’ll see what Day 4 has in store…
