With the U16 minicamp coming to a close last month the U16 national team program for the season has also come to a conclusion. This season the age group will not have an end of the year tournament. Keep in mind this was the age group that had traveled to to St.Pölten at the start of the season and had a team in Popard and of course the successful Kamloops tournament, both in December.
During this past U16 mini camp icehockey.hu had the pleasure of sitting down with a few players from this national team after the camp had finished up. These boys have had many great adventures with the national team during this past national team season under the guidance of Glen Williamson and his coaching staff. Four young men, one goalie, one defenseman and two forwards from four different clubs provided their insight to what they saw, heard and learned during the past season.
With the growing popularity of the sport in the younger age groups more and more kids are hitting that minim level that is needed to be called into the national team, with this competition is born to not only be invited bit to make the final traveling roster. “I was called into all of the U16 mini camps, there was always tough competitions between everyone that was here in the camps. Especially when we were getting ready for a tournament and we were fighting for roster spots.” says Kristóf Rácz, a forward from Debrecen. Miskolc forward Márton Farkas followed this up by saying “I really like coming to the minicamps, I am usually pretty happy when I get called in, I feel that I can develop a lot and really like the group of guys that are here. I can improve a lot during the tournament and also we can also learn a lot from the coaches.”
With this being the last time this age group would be together for a national team camp the coaching staff decided to mix it up a bit. “This time around it was a bit different, there were some guys that were not here because they were playing up with thee U18 national team, some guys were sick and he had some U14 guys here as well.” said UTE defenceman Zsolt Egyedi, “There were less players, because of this we only played matches on the ice and the presentations were a lot more geared to personal improvement than the usual tactical presentations. I think these presentations were more interesting since something was new to us. I think these two day mini camps are really helpful, and we are always practicing game situation and it is the national team after all.”
MAC goalie Máté Sági gave a sneak peak into what the goalies did. “It is nice to have separate goalie practice where we can learn a lot. They really work on the smallest mistakes, we have presentation during these two day mini camps and we get to have goalie presentations, for example today we had one on how to control rebounds.”
Rácz summed up why he thinks these camps are useful, “It is great that we have a coach who comes from the top hockey country in the world, we practice our English and he really knows what he is talking about, we have a chance to learn a lot”