A hockey school does a camp like this in our home town, and they do a good job. I helped them out last summer and was impressed with how they manage a large group with a wide variety of talent.
After a warm-up, much of the time is spent with the ice divided into 3 zones. The kids gather and get an explanation of the 3 zones & drills. Next they rotate through the zones 10 minutes at a time, and they keep them moving quickly from one zone to the next. One zone is usually an offensive skill, another skating technique, and the 3rd checking or defence-related, but I'm sure you could split it up however you wanted. If you have one instructor in each zone the kids get lots of individual attention.
The sessions wrap-up with a full-ice game of some sort that pushes their abilities or thought process (game with 3 tennis balls going, game with 4 goalies-score anywhere, game with 5 pucks, etc.) much like the SAG's but with everyone on the ice. It's fast and furious and the kids love it. Then they have lunch and come back for off-ice training.
Does this help?
DMan
Hi DMan,
Yes, any ideas are welcome, thanks. I have been involved in hockey camps before but I would like to have opinions what to do and especially how to do these skill sessions. There should be 3 to 4 instructors on-ice from which one is for goalies. By dividing to 3 zones, you get lot of reps which is great. Kids love to do stuff and not wait in lines. Would you take anything more advanced like for example teaching the four playing roles, different break-out options, d-zone coverage and etc. or similar? Would you take separate defense and offense drills at the end of the week?
Br,
PW
May I suggest starting the sessions with the skills stations, you can divide up the rink into 5 or 6 stations to give a good work to rest ratio, and focus on certain skills, stickhandling, skating, etc. then split into more "flow drills" using 1/3 of the ice, in each zone, incorporate SAG and then you can go to full ice. Tom has posted many examples of skills stations and how to divide the rink over the last few weeks. Hope this might help.
I am at the World Championships in Heidelber Germany. Germany just beat the USA 2-1 in OT in front of the largest crowd in hockey history, 76 000 in a soccer field that is covered.
I am attending a coaching conference and there was a great session on how we learn and the research says the less coach input and the more plaeyr decison making on how to do things the better. Also large groups in small areas causes the brain to make qucik decisons which can become hard wired as movement patterns.
So essentially the coaches job is to organize on ice sessions in small areas and cause the players to engage in the decison making process so that they own the decisons they make and it becomes what they do. The
more game like the better and the more challenging the better.
So throw out the lining up to do mindless drills where no decision making is needed and shrink the space and make everything game like and competitive so that the players are 1. engaged and 2. enjoy it.
We had this summer hockey camp last week from Mon to Fri and we implemented it almost exactly like Tom have suggested here. I divided the whole group into three groups with 6+6 skaters, i.e., 6 black and 6 yellow jerseys. These groups were as similar tier as possible in order to make the SAGs even. Then first we usually skated like 5' forwards, backwards and curves/pivots, then the ice was always divided to three sections. One or two sections always had SAG (1-1/2-1/1-2/2-2/3-3), one section had passing/shooting drill and sometimes one section was for skating drills. We also played keep-away and 2-2 or 3-3 passing games, where 3/4/5 passes equals goal, since there were only two goalies present. One good puck handling game we used is played inside face-off circle where everyone tries to hold to their own puck and try to get the other's puck outside of the face-off circle. The last man inside the circle with his puck wins. This was also a fun game and very much like keep-away but stress more on puck handling and puck protection. Usually after these three stations we then played 20' to 30' 6-6/5-5 game with the whole ice. We also used floorball and handball SAGs at off-ice to teach roles 1 and 2. Seemed like every kid enjoyed the week, I certainly did, kids love to play, eat and play again :-).
Koutsi97, I plan to do similar things at the camps I do in July. One in Jasper National Park and the other in the Czech Republic.
In Jasper it is a mix of ages between 7-16 with both girls and boys all on the ice at the same time. We do some things together and some in groups. I bring 4 small nets with me and lots of different balls and pucks.
Right after that camp I fly to Prague and then go to Jihlava which is about an hour south. Ken Moyseyev has arranged for me to replace him to run the camp. He has conflicts with various other things and can't go. http://www.hcdukla.cz/zobraz.asp?t=letni_hokejova_skola
This is more like a regular hockey school and the players are organized into age groups and I will have about 4 coaches on the ice with me. So more stations, like you mention, are possible but everything will go into games and contests after technique practice.
Ken is from Russia and played in the Red Army system. He moved to LA as a young adult and does a lot of coaching there. He brought me to LA a few years ago to help him with a midget camp. We think along the same lines so when he needed someone to replace him I got the call.
It was a neat few weeks because right after Ken's camp I flew from LA to Guadalajara, Mexico and my son and I ran a camp for 25 young Mexicans. They had whatever equipment they could scrounge up. Bike and army helmets, shin pads with no socks, sticks curved the wrong way and a formula 1 Zambonie driver who did the ice in about 4 minutes. Carlos brought us down and later his two boy's came to Canada to many hockey schools in Calgary and the Okanagan. Both made the Mexican national youth teams.
Hi Tom,
Mexico sounds interesting place to coach, there should be challenging skaters to teach but I think very rewarding also. I would have like to be there but since I'm working almost full-time and coaching on the side traveling is luxury once in ten years or so. During next Christmas time we will head to Czech for a tournament with one of out two teams but I don't know if I'm able to go along.
I hope some day we'll get a change to go to Canada. This January we went to Ornskoldsvik, Sweden for U13 tournament and boys loved that place and tournament was so well arranged that I can recommended that place for everyone. Maybe you know that place, it's very famous hockey down? We got to visit the locker room also in the Fjallraven arena where MoDo plays and saw Forsberg's gear. Unfortunately Fobba has left the building already ;-).
Russia is close but I don't know why Finnish teams don't visit there more. Maybe the language barrier is quite high since most of us can speak Swedish and English but not so many speak Russia...
Koutsi07,
There are a lot of great tournaments in Canada at various times in the year. In Calgary there are always tournaments at Christmas time when the leagues have a break. The Mac's Midget is a big tournament for U18 players. At the end of March the leagues are finished and a lot of teams want to play in a tournament to finish off the year. So a lot of tournaments happen late in March.
Then spring/summer hockey starts and tournaments happen on weekends. Our schools go until the end of June so at the beginning of July big tournaments for these select teams start. In Calgary they have a huge one called the Stampede Challenge that happens during the Calgary Stampede which is like a wild west Mardi Gras that lasts for 10 days That tournament has teams of all ages from all over the hockey world.
So hockey never ends here and if you want to be in a tournament they would love to have a Finnish team or two.
Hi,
Tom requested some discussion here, so here's my "issues" today. There must be lot of people here that run hockey summer camps. Any suggestions what to take off-ice and on-ice for peewees, i.e., 97 born? The group will be something like 25 skaters and 2-4 goalies, so quite large to be on-ice same time (I know but this is not in my powers to decide). Two off-ice and two on-ice sessions per day for Monday to Friday. The Friday will be games only. I'm planning to have on-ice 50% of the time skills (skating, puck handling, passing and shooting) and 50% of the time games (SAGs with 2-2 and 3-3 and full 5-5) on every on-ice session. Skills at low tempo first but maybe some high tempo flow drills at the end of the week? Does it matter that the group is so large when taking high tempo flow drills since there will be lines? Nothing too serious though since hey, it will be summer ;-)...
Br,
PeeWee