Saving the Game

While everyone was sunning themselves in the hot English sun, a group of girls from across the world gathered together in Sheffield, Great Britain recently for the IIHF women’s High Performance Camp.  The group came together to focus on becoming elite female athletes.  The trainers worked with each player to teach them not only how to become a good athletes but also to become a hard-working elite athletes.

Trainers from all aspects including nutrition were brought in to show the athletes what tools they needed to create themselves into the elite athletes they were striving to become.

This is the third Performance Camp to be held.  The first was in Bratislava, Slovakia.  Last year’s affair was held in Vierumaki, Finland.  This year 180 athletes from 18 countries participated in the camp.  The theme of the camp was “From Sochi to Pyeong Chang.” Sochi being the 2014 Winter Olympic location and Pyeong Chang is the location for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

The IIHF’s (International Ice Hockey Federation) aim is to build on the foundations from the two previous camps with a strong focus on the technical skills needed for the game as well as strength, conditioning, nutrition and team building.

One such athlete is Jessica Curtis from Great Britain who has been playing hockey for seven years and is already staking her claim in the hockey annuls.   She has already been selected for the U18 GB Women’s squad and a player for Bracknell Queen Bees, Bracknell Firebees and Slough Jets U18 team.

Jessica started playing because her parents watched their local men’s team, the Slough Jets:

“My parents have watched my local men's team play since they started up quite a while back. I went to my first ice-hockey game when I was only 1month 4 days old. However I didn't start ice-skating till I was 9. When I was in America I went to watch the Las Vegas wranglers play and the whole atmosphere overwhelmed me. After this I wanted to start playing hockey, I started off training with the learn to play and than I got asked to train with the under 10s where I started playing for my local team slough jets with the boys.”

Jessica was one of only eight girls from Great Britain invited to participate in the Performance Camp.  The other countries that participated were Slovakia, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Hungary and Canada.

“I felt privileged and honored to be part of the high performance camp because it proved to me that the hard work is paying off and motivated me to keep going. Also I was honored to be involved in a camp that will help improve women's hockey not just in my own country but all over the world.”

With everyone being from different parts of the world, there were some language barriers to overcome but with a bit of teamwork, Jessica pushed through the obstacle:

“I found training with people from other countries a new experience, I couldn't imagine not being able to talk English like some of the girls on my team, but working as a team we all helped each other. It was amazing to be training with the best girls of my age from all over the world and it made me realize how high the standard of hockey really is at the top level.” 

One of the goals at the camp was to teach the girls how to play at the elite level in order to be more competitive and has already inspired Jessica to achieve more and train to play at a higher level.

“I thought the way the athletes who have experienced top level hockey got to talk to us about their experience was so useful and inspiring. I had a talk with a few of the athletes and it made me realize how hard it is to play at the top level, but anything can happen if you want it to. These are people that athletes look up to and follow, so I feel that listening to them has inspired me in many different ways. 

     I also thought the skating sessions were very useful because sometimes a lot of coaches skip the basics of hockey. It made me realize how much there is to do to help my skating for example the parachutes. It has also made me realize how important the office is to improve my on ice, specifically for skating. I don't train an awful lot on the ice, but I now know some great exercises to improve my skating and performance. And some of these can be down in the house, it has proven that even the littlest, simplest things will improve my performance. The strength and conditioning coaches were amazing and couldn't of asked for Anyone better. They were very motivating and encouraged us to keep going and never give up. As we got told a lot during the camp 'get comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

It wasn’t just skating the girls were learning but how to keep their bodies in shape for the game

“One of the main things I learnt from the camp is how important nutrition is to help my performance & my recovery. It has made me think not just about what I eat but when I eat to maximize my performance. This will help my performance in the future, because my on & off ice training will improve as a consequence of eating properly at the right time. 

I also learnt how important warm up & cool down is, not just to help my performance but also to reduce the risk of injury. Before I would do a warm up but it was not specific to hockey, during the camp our strength coach took us through some great exercises and explained why we done them, also how it was related to playing hockey.”

Improving the women’s game is the key to success and making the sport become more successful

“To improve the women's game I think top level athletes have to be prepared and dedicated to the sport to train both on and off the ice. The camp made me realize how much my game and others performance improve by doing basic exercises specific to our sports to maximize our performance on the ice, just simple things like at the camp we done skating Sims off the ice that improves our skating on the ice.”

Women’s hockey does have a journey to take to become more competitive but the camps and what the women took away with them is a start, perhaps one day more women’s teams will be invited to participate in the Winter Olympics and become as popular as the men’s game.

 

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