There will be a Hungarian representative at the 2016 Youth Winter Olympics in Nátán Vertes of the Gábor Ocskay Jr. Academy. Vertes qualified for the ice hockey skills challenge competition.
The Skills Challenge is made up of six events, all of these events had a qualifying competition that was held this past week at the IIHF development camp in Finland, each skater completed two skills to try to qualify for the winter youth games.
In the Hungarian qualifying round Orsolya Váradi won the girls event with Nátán Vertes being the winner among the boys, these two travelled to Vierumaki Finland to the international qualifying round where they competed against 36 boys and 31 girls to try to get one of the final 15 spots. In the first part of the week everyone did a trial run in every event and they would be ranked according to this when they would start the quilfications. In the Qualifications the winner received 5 points, 4 for second, the losing semifinalists would get 3 points each and if you made it to the quarterfinals you were guaranteed 2 points. Any one that was eliminated in teh first round received one point. At the end the players with the top 15 scores in both the boys and the girls categories would be going to the 2016 Youth Winter Olympics in Lillehammer Norway. Vertes quilfied by finishing in seventh place in Vierumaki.
Things did not go well for Orsolya Váradi, she got sick on her second day in camp as she picked up some kind of virus which weakened her, she had to go to the hospital but still competed with a fever. Luckily the virus was out of her system by the second half of the week for when they kept score. Because she entered the competition without a score she was the lowest rated athlete in every skill and had to go against the top rated skater in all six challenges. Unfortunately she was not able to finish in the top 15 female athletes.
Skill Challenges:
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Fastest Lap
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Shot Accuracy
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Skating Agility
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Hardest Shot
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Passing Accuracy
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Puck Handling
“We worked with Nátán on the ice for about a week and a half, I tried to put him in situations that he might come across during the competition. We practiced everything and then the last couple of days we did it in a live atmosphere for time. We had five other skaters practice with him, this way he was also competing against someone as well. We tried to eliminate any potential mistakes and also improve his passing and shooting where it still needed to be.” said Dávid Kiss, one of the coaches for Fehérvár AV19.
For the last part of the preparation both Orsolya and Nátán practiced at the Kisstadion since the rink still had ice, MAC Budapest coach Tibor Marton worked with the kids to have them at the top of their game when they travelled. The training sessions were conducted in a friendly environment where everyone had fun.