Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Youth Hockey Players-Basic Tactical Skills

Parents, coaches, journalists, and officials have been moaning and groaning on the quality of our youth hockey players in the ongoing Malaysian Junior Hockey League(MJHL).  

The future of our national hockey teams lies in this generation of youth hockey players.

I, for one, do not have any plans to beat a dead horse nor annoy my friends in the hockey fraternity.

I have watched a few games in the ongoing MJHL and what worries me most is these youth hockey players do not even understand the basic tactical skills of the game.

Basic tactical skills are also referred to as game intelligence, where the player needs to perform the right action at the right moment and the outcome is successful.

Coaches need to inculcate these youth hockey players with basic tactical skills from their specializing age 13+, and a tactical skills inventory list must be put in place to evaluate the player's improvement.

The results from this inventory list can guide the coach to lead the players to higher performance in training and games.

There are four key areas in the Tactical Skills Inventory List, as presented below:
  • Positioning and deciding
  • Knowing about ball actions
  • Knowing about others
  • Acting in Changing Situations
On each area, the coach must prepare a set of
questionnaires to evaluate these youth hockey players' understanding of the game.

The above four key areas cover all aspects of the tactical skills, that is attack vs defense or researchers called it "declarative versus procedural knowledge".

In other words "knowing what to do" refers to declarative knowledge and "doing it" refers to procedural knowledge.

When a hockey player has a proper understanding of the game then he is good at reading the game and making the right decisions.

The essence of a good hockey player is the ability to read, recognize and react (3R) during a game.

To have any success in developing youth hockey players that are good at reading the game, Malaysian Hockey Confederation(MHC) must groom coaches who can create new technical and tactical skills that will inspire these young hockey players to learn and master new skills in training.


Thank You.
















1 comment:

  1. To improve hockey in Malaysia, school which are interested or encourage to learn hockey can approach MHC for help in knowledge of hockey.
    It must be the effort from all parties, Teachers, Students, Parents, Hockey Association to increase the standard of hockey.
    The public nowadays are more interested in social media and politics rather than games. Most youngster like to play virtual games than sweat on the field. Teacher training college, University with sports subjects should combine efforts to promote Hockey which Malaysia was once top four in the world.
    Like ola Bola movie the Malaysia Football team was the best during the 80's. Hockey used to be the top in 70's and 80's. Those days some school play hockey with "kayu pokok jambu" at their leisure time because they can't afford one. Only during training at school they are allowed to play with the hockey stick.
    Former hockey players should be given opportunity to be sports teachers to train the students. With their hockey experience local and abroad they can transfer their knowledge and experience to the students.
    Research should also be done by sports university students to gather information from all hockey players to share their knowledge and experience for the betterment of Malaysian hockey.
    thanks
    Jie

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