Last week the U15 and U18 age groups each had a minicamp in the Tüskecsarnok, this week the U13, U14 and U16 hit the ice under the guidance of Glen Williamson and U20 was with Rich Chernomaz.
Glen Williamson talked about the U13 through U16 age groups with icehockey.hu
“We just finished up the second camp this season for the U16, it was really cool and great for Hungarian hockey. In the first game we had 45 kids, this time around we had some cancellations and we had 38-40. Most the guys are new to this age group, which means the overall pool of talent is better and bigger so rethought and elevated everyone so that everyone has an equal chance, we will cut it down to the top 40-50 players in November for the tournament team. We have had a chance to teach and evaluate and now we will have exit meetings where they will be told what else they have to work on.
The U15 is doing the same thing we had a camp in September and one now, we had 50 kids in the first camp and another 45 kids this time around, so we have the top players in Hungary, we have more numbers and we are seeing more kids and more kids are getting a fair chance, we evaluate them and teach them and for the tournament camps we bring in the top 40. We are always revealing them and then we tell them what they need to work on.
With the U13 and U14 we have one day camps because of their age, we had two days for each age group and we had 50 kids in for each day, which is a hundered kids coming into the system. We want 150-160 kids with at least one or two camps for them. It motivates them and creates dreams but we pick the top, the club coaches send lists and we go through the lists and evaluate the players.”
We also asked the director of the youth program how the U15-U16 builds on top of the U13-U14 age group.
“Its great, at U13 you teach teh basics systems and skills, skating passing shooting, checking, tricks, puckhandling. At U14 we teach the first skills and we build the systems on top of that. We will be playing in some great tournaments, we will be playing in Austria, in Slovakia and we will be at an international tournament where we will be facing teams from Russia and Canada. This is why we have one day camps so we can have the maximum amount of kids in the camps.
This is a pyramid, the U15 will be playing in five tournaments during the season with the last one being in Riga Latvia, where Sweden, Russia, Norway, Swiss and North American teams. With U16 around Christmas we will be going to two tournaments, one in Canada and one in Slovakia, the Canadian one is through Bob Dever which happened to be one of the top bantam tournaments in the world where there will be NCAA and major junior scouts in attendance. This will be great for the program and our kids.
The other tournament in Slovakia we were invited to which is great that that we are the ones being invited by everyone.