2 minute read
Why Coach Hockey Players?
Excerpt taken from PSA Hockey Skating 1 manual
Hockey skating coaches are in high demand, and figure skating coaches have the skating background necessary to become effective hockey skating coaches. You can achieve success in ice hockey by taking what you know about on-ice movement and transferring that information into a means of helping hockey players find the power, agility, and speed necessary for the game of ice hockey.
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There is a high demand for hockey skating coaches. Several factors exist that leave hockey players with little or no formal training in skating technique. Youth hockey organizations predominately rely on volunteer parents to coach their teams. Consequently, professional figure skating coaches have a unique opportunity to provide valuable and badly needed expertise to this related, but different sport. Many youth hockey organizations, coaches, parents, and players welcome the expertise that professional figure skating coaches offer.
The Benefits of Coaching Hockey Players
• Rewarding—Hockey players and their parents generally recognize the positive impact skating instruction makes in their game performance. It is personally rewarding to witness the seconds on a stopwatch decrease as the skater masters a more efficient technique, or be there as a player makes a travel team for the first time as a result of improved skating skills.
• Financially beneficial—Hockey skating coaches earn a salary for private and semi-private lessons that is comparable to figure skating coaches. As the professional hockey skating coach earns a reputation for success, opportunities to work with teams and hockey camps may also become available. Instructors committed to improving their players on ice performance will find hockey skating instruction a viable source of primary or secondary income.
• Low maintenance—As a skills coach, hockey skating instructors are responsible for just one aspect of their players’ game: skating. Skating coaches are not required to travel to tournaments. There are no competition forms, music to cut, or programs to choreograph. There is a single responsibility: to help your students become the best skaters they have the potential to be.
• Increased credentials/ value—Professional instructors with multiple discipline backgrounds are valuable to both the skating public and the ice rinks that employ them. The more types of students an instructor can teach, the more students he or she is likely to have.
• Can improve coaching ability—Figure skating coaches who work with hockey players are forced to expand their usual methods in order to explain skills to this different type of athlete. The exercise of adjusting the instruction can come back around to benefiting that coach in their original discipline by expanding the way they communicate with their figure skaters.
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