Girls are going to Russia

The Women’s senior national team will be starting their season early,in August as they will be traveling to Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia to take part in a prestigious tournament.

The president of SKIF Nizhniy Novgorod, S.I. Kolotnev invited the Hungarian national team to their tournament that will be held between August 8th through the 10th. The Golden Hohloma tournament is a prestigious tournament that has anywhere between 4 to 6 teams competing in it. At  the moment Kazakhstan, Germany and Slovakia will also be in attendance with Hungary and the host club SKIF rounding out the competition at the moment, the host club is also the team where 2015 Hungarian Player of the year Franciska Kiss Simon spent the past season.

On May 21st the U18 and the senior women's teams hit the ice together in preparation for their upcoming season and the earlier start. The team played two scrimmages in mixed teams, the senior players with the U18 players. We talked to national team coach Tibor Marton during the one day mini camp. “We will have a busy schedule during the upcoming season, in August we will be in Russia for a well known tournament and we would like to travel with a prepared team. We would also try to have everyone in the best possible shape for the the start of the international season, because of this we called in every senior player and junior player that we think has a chance of playing for the senior team during the season, this will continue on during the summer.
The first step was to have a one day minicamp to see what condition the girls are in. We know that the conditioning level of everyone at the end of the season is not at the highest level, we just wanted to see where everyone was at. We want to see what everyone can take on and who will be willing to sacrifice their free time to get better. We would like to get as many younger players involved as we can and see where they are at compared to the more experienced players.
During the summer we will have one on ice session per week where we will not be working with tactics but improving the all round skill set of everyone. We will have some really hard off ice sessions that will be conducted by strength and conditioning coaches. The players will workout together and individually as well so they can improve on the areas that are a weakness for them.”
With winning the gold and promotion to the next level, Hungary improved by two spots on the IIHF world rankings and therefore are exempt from participating in the next Olympic Qualifying round. This would have been played in August but now will be replaced by the tournament in Russia, which Coach Marton said was a nice trade.

“The Russian tournament will be better than playing in the first round of the Olympic Qualifiers, we will be facing teams such as Germany and Russian club teams, which is great. The only way for us to improve is to play against teams that are better than us, this is when we can see what we still need to improve in.”
Women’s hockey has more obstacles to overcome such as the men's, it is hard to get everyone together for practice since most of the girls are working once the season ends, and the offseason starts.
“It's not easy but he we want to take the step forward we need to make sacrifices, and I am noticing that there are girls that are willing to do this, I really like this. The two scirmages that we just had, were very well balanced and fast paced.”