Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is Kerstin Matthews – Associate Head Coach with the Boston University women’s ice hockey program. The Terriers won their last game against Merrimack and plays a home-and-home with Providence this coming weekend.
Create a player profile and connect with Kerstin on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/kerstin-matthews/
Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is Josh Sciba – Head Coach with the Union College women’s ice hockey program. The team is now 3-5 with a big win recently at Boston University.
Create a player profile and connect with Josh on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/josh-sciba/
One of my biggest frustrations over the last 18 months or so has been about providing feedback to players. Across many different playing environments I have been consistently disappointed in the lack of sophistication and priority on giving insightful, actionable feedback to players. This post discusses the good and bad of hockey coach feedback to players.
Here is what I’ve seen what most coaches are good at:
For the most part, coaches have no problem talking to players after a shift and have a conversation about what just happened. Some coaches are more positive and constructive than others (e.g. “What did you see?” rather than “Here is what you did wrong…”). I doubt there are many coaches who last a reasonable amount of time without providing this basic level of constructive player feedback.
I won’t say systems – because some youth coaches do play systems and others have a type of hockey they want to play which focuses more on skills rather than set plays and rules. In general, coaches know how to set theses expectations and work on the in practice. Thus it can be pretty easy to give this kind of feedback either on the bench or in the locker room.
However, here’s what coaches generally aren’t good at:
What are the prioritized skills and attributes a player should be competent in? What are their biggest strengths that they can leverage? What areas do they need to level up so that they can minimize those attributes being exposed. For example, skating, puck handling, shot strength and accuracy. From what I’ve seen, it is usually one-off feedback with the player having to work on it with by themselves or with their own skills development coach.
Having a coach show personalized clips to an individual player is very rare. Many coaches do not have the time or resources to provide player-specific reviews. However, it can be a shared responsibility between player, coach and parent to clip together game footage and to discuss together.
Providing individual report cards or interim check-ins throughout the season on what strengths and development opportunities like skills and/or concepts for a player. For example, Darryl Belfry likes to look at players over a 3 or 4 game segment and track with video and basic stats (e.g. how many puck touches turn into a positive or negative play) and then discuss them with a player. Some coaches give mid-year reviews for their players and in my experience it looks like a bullet list of 3 or items for the player to work on. However, the onus is then on the player to figure out how to get better at those items on their own.
This is a tough one.
Being candid with a player about where they are with their game at the moment can be a very tough conversation regardless of the players abilities. All players are an unfinished product. And in youth hockey they are still a long way from their peak potential – so providing the appropriate context and perspective is not always easy.
Why don’t all coaches provide holistic feedback? Some…
Unfortunately, I have seen the above at almost every level, but most disappointing has been seeing it at the highest levels of hockey. For example, in a rare instance of this being done well…one player who was in consideration for a national team, received lots of feedback and what the coaches wanted to them do this season. However, what was more common are the many examples where other players attending national camps received little to no meaningful feedback, even when requested. It seems that unless a coach or organization has a vested, long-term interest in a player or team, they will not put in the time or effort that most players need.
As a parent or a youth player, it is important to be realistic on the types of feedback to expect from your team coach based on the level of play and the club/program you signed up for. In most situations, you will likely have to go beyond the basic feedback practices of your coach and find ways to supplement them with other experts you trust.
(Note to my kids current coaches: I am not referring to you – this post was mostly written over the past summer and incorporates conversations I’ve had with parents from all over the country).
Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is Tara Connolly – Assistant Coach with the RPI Engineers women’s ice hockey team. This weekend the Engineers are hosting the RIT Tigers for a pair of games.
Create a player profile and connect with Tara on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/tara-connolly
Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is David Stockdale – Head Coach of the Franklin Pierce women’s ice hockey team. The Ravens are in Happy Valley this weekend to play two games against Penn State.
Create a player profile and connect with David on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/david-stockdale
Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is Katelyn Parker. Katelyn is the Youth Player Development Coach with the Seattle Kraken youth hockey association. Previously she was a Division I NCAA with UConn and Brown. She also played DI college hockey at Colgate.
Create a player profile and connect with Katelyn on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/katelyn-parker
Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is Laura Bellamy. Laura is the Associate Head Coach of the Minnesota-Duluth Women’s Ice Hockey team. The Bulldogs are ranked #10 in the Women’s College Hockey polls.
Create a player profile and connect with Laura on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/laura-bellamy
As the new hockey season begins, many girls and their parents will begin the process of looking at hockey academies for next fall. We went through this process last year with the schools most folks would consider the top three girls hockey academies in the U.S. Here are some of the key learnings from our experience and how our daughter made her decision on which one was right for her.
This post is less about the specific hockey academy my daughter chose to attend this year, and more about the various factors that went into her decision that anyone considering going to a female hockey academy should consider.
In addition, this isn’t meant as a critique of any program – each program has their pros and cons – which is why none of the programs are specifically mentioned. And while there were significant differences in the “candidate experience” for how my daughter was treated by each school during the process, that topic won’t be covered here.
Just like in the work world, recruiting is a two-way street. One of the first items to consider is how good is your player? Being a very good player is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for admission and selection. In addition schools also look at the following:
The application process and essay questions helps schools with assessing many of these factors.
Each application is unique because there are a number of attributes that are distinct for the school and the student-athlete. As an example, my daughter was already a sophomore when applying to these schools, and therefore the number of openings for a player who would only attend 2 (or possibly 3) years at the school did indeed impact her consideration. Specifically, the number of spots open for her position (defense) and her age varied by program, since the school needs to have the right balance of ages across both the 16U and 19Uteams. They can’t have 10 D with the same graduation year.
Here are the 8 factors that we considered for evaluating the three hockey academies (in priority order):
All the school players get great exposure to college coaches. And while many players play college hockey, not all of them play DI – so it is no guarantee that getting into a hockey academy will mean a DI scholarship or playing in the Ivy League.
The most important factor was clearly player development. Where did we think our daughter would be the best she could be? And since coaches and skill development are critical to her success, over the two or three years should would be attending, we did back-channel references on all the coaches she would likely be interacting with from current parents and alumni players from each program.
A few questions that you should ask the coaches:
a) Will there be a coach who knows how to coach my player’s specific position? This is even more important for goaltenders.
b) What is the coach’s philosophy about ice time during the season and playoffs? How do you trade off winning vs development?
c) If the player is not on the top line, will they still develop by getting game ice time and receiving productive feedback from the coaching staff (not just being criticized for errors)?
There were indeed significant differences for these answers across programs.
Getting a solid education while playing hockey is obviously quite important. And while all the hockey academies send players to top schools, it seemed that some were better than others at actually preparing students for the next level in their education. I have no doubt most girls will rise to the occasion when they get to college, but we definitely saw big variation in our perception on how well our daughter would be prepared for university level courses.
Note: If academics were the #1 priority for a player, they should probably consider a New England prep school.
At most of the hockey academies, players come from all over the country and were typically the best players on their team prior to arrival. As a result, their attitude towards their teammates and the camaraderie seemed to differ across schools. Some were more humble and accessible, while at others, a sense of superiority, entitlement and cliques were more obvious. If you are going to spend 24 hours a day with your teammates, you will want to make sure you really like spending time with them.
Candidly, some of the hockey and training infrastructure available at one of the schools is significantly better than the others. Having 24 hour access to ice time is definitely an advantage for some academies. As well, off-ice training facilities and rehab resources can make a difference. The key is knowing what some of the trade-offs are between programs and which are “must-haves” vs. “nice-to-haves”. It is similar to women’s college teams, some have pro-level facilities, while other top name programs aren’t as lavish, but still consistently are Top 10 teams on the ice.
Factors like room size, number of roommates, access to kitchens and food can make a difference to the player. Four people to room is different than two to a room. Meals are obviously a big deal and getting the high quality meals at the right time of day is very important. Other small amenities can matter too, for example, my daughter likes to bake – so that was one of the factors that was a positive for her in her choice.
Depending on where you live and how independent your player is, location can matter. Distance from home and the amenities surrounding the school may impact your experience. For us, we would be travelling from the west coast, so it was less important from a parent point of view since all of them were far from home.
Obviously this varies by school and your specific needs. This would include tuition, boarding, hockey and travel costs. Not just the player costs, but also the cost for the parents to travel to games and to the school. There are differences between schools, but you would need to assess the difference in value to you individually for your specific situation.
While this is very important, the reality is that all the U.S. hockey academies are highly scouted and have the top coaches watching many of their games in-person and online. If your player is good enough for their school, they will get seen. Even more importantly, your player’s coaches will have existing relationships with almost all DI and top DIII schools. This is a major asset the academies provide and will certainly give your player access that many other club programs probably don’t have.
As mentioned above, every player’s path is different, but these were the key themes and factors that drove our daughters decision. If you had a different experience, additional thoughts or questions. Feel free to reach out on social media or here to share your experience.
Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is Matt Desrosiers. Matt is the Head Coach of the Clarkson Women’s Ice Hockey team and two-time national champion. The Golden Knights were recently ranked at #10 in the pre-season polls.
Create a player profile and connect with Matt on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/matt-desrosiers
Today’s Champs Coach of the Day is Allison Coomey. Allison is the Associate Head Coach of the Penn State Women’s Ice Hockey team. The Nittany Lions were just ranked #14 in the pre-season polls.
Create a player profile and connect with Allison on Champs App. https://profile.champs.app/h/allison-coomey
