General
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| Author Linda McCandless, top row, second from left. |
Day One
Lying on my back in Lynah Rink in Ithica, NY, looking through the grid on my face mask, I�m counting the number of championship banners on the ceiling and stretching my left gluteus maximus. Eight Ivy League titles on the women�s side; 15 Ivy championships; nine ECAC�s; two national titles on the men�s side.
Left skate touches the outside of the right knee, hold for 15 seconds.
Alanna Hayes plays here. Joe Nieuwendyk used to. This is the rink where the Women�s Hockey Team won the Ivy League title under Cornell Coach Julie Andeberhan. That�s her, standing over there. This is where hockey dreams are made�even if your glutes are pushing 40.
Switch legs, hold for 15 seconds.
The Camp
Reaching for our shin guards in the locker room the first night, we listened to an 18-year-old goalie from Alaska complain this was her third straight week of hockey camp. The Division I hopeful was shopping for a school to hang her skates. Two of us had played varsity level hockey; none of us had ever attended three weeks of camp. Long past the age when a Division I coach was going to come knocking, we all felt lucky just to lace up.
We came to learn, to play and to have fun. Teacher, guidance counselor, ag engineering grad student, network engineer, associate dean of students, communications director, physical therapist, computer consultant, archivist, nurse: We all had one thing in common, a passion to improve. Some took vacation from work, others left work early.
Everyone rearranged their summer to put the clinic first. �It�s something I do all the time for my kids,� said one hockey mom. �For once, I�m doing it for me.�
All of us were pumped to skate five nights in a row. A few kept up their coed summer city league schedule at night after camp. By day five, everyone was sore but happy.
�The hardest thing they made me do was get off the ice,� said Joy Veronneau, a 39-year-old mother of two. The former club player coaches a 10-year-olds team and plays for the Ithaca Sirens as well as the city league.
Most of the players came from the local women�s team, the Ithaca Sirens, and a few hailed from the Hudson River Waves in Albany. Some had been playing hockey for 20 years, others for two. All of us had played athletics, but none of us were young enough to have benefited from the current opportunities for girls in sports. Some of us have daughters who will be helped by Title IX.
Julie Andeberhan, Cornell University Women�s Varsity Hockey coach, headed the coaching staff. She was joined by Carol Mullins, assistant coach at Cornell; Patch Mason, women�s coach at Williams College; and Les Lawton, varsity women�s coach at Concordia University in Montreal and head coach of the Canadian National Women�s Team. Eight Cornell University varsity players assisted.
The Agenda
The coaches were covering two weeks of camp for beginner, intermediate, advanced and elite 13 to 18-year-olds, and running the adult women�s clinic at night. Camp was divided into two sessions: on-ice from 5-6:30 pm and off-ice instruction from 6:45-8:15 pm.
�Adults are incredibly receptive,� said Andeberhan. �The skill level may not be as high as the younger players but their understanding of the game is better.�
On-ice, the program was to play short games of tag to warm up, followed by 10 minutes of stretches. Next came drills and game situations All drills were demonstrated by coaches, who then filled in with the campers on drills. They were inspiring to watch and always willing to give some friendly one-on-one feedback.
�Talk to each other, talk to each other, ask for that puck,� yelled Lawton, more than once. His other favorite caveat: never pass the puck in the neutral zone. He drilled us on his break-out philosophy�keep the wingers wide, break the puck out of the defensive zone, second offensive player across the line skate hard to the outside post, and third player stay high.
�Nine times out of ten, you�ll come on so fast, the defense won�t have time to set up, and you�ll get a shot on net,� he said. It was the same strategy his Canadian team used to win a gold medal in 1994.
In the post-ice chalk talk, discussions revolved around offensive zone strategies, defensive zone strategies and effective transitions. What�s your role on offense? What�s your role on defense? How does a team learn to work together? We discussed the four dimensions of hockey: skills, tactics, the physical game and the mental game. One night, we toured the new $3 million Cornell varsity team Strength and Conditioning Complex, where the philosophy for all sports is to develop the power zone located between the mid-torso region and the knees. Strength plus conditioning equals power, no matter what your age or gender. The last night�s chalk talk took place at the local brew pub, a favorite stop.
Day Two
Having a wonderful time . . . apparently the game of hockey is played largely with the quadriceps and most of yesterday�s warm-up work concentrated on that, which today leads me to look for chairs with arms to ease that transition from sitting to standing. �The coaching has been very positive and I know that�s the only way for me to believe that I can do this,� said 44-year-old Meg John-Testa, a mainstay on offense for the Sirens, who started playing hockey 15 years ago.
Day Three
This is so great! Remind me why we don�t practice every day from 5-6:30. It is so exciting to see the changes from last year. Power turns and receiving passes may seem simple to players with lots of experience, but to a new player these simple things are so critical and gratifying,� said Lynne Logan, a 44-year-old mother of two, who jazz dances, races sailboats and in-line skates. �Playing hockey makes me feel like I�m 25.�
Day Four
The strategy that clicked was skating to create time and space and to provide support for the puck carrier. This was especially useful when we tried it in breakout and neutral zone drills,� said Tammy Gobert, who played right wing for Cornell University back in the late �70s, helped start the Sirens and plays for the Hudson River Waves.
Day Five
The high ratio of instructors to players allowed for a great deal of personalized feedback, but the small number of players prevents us from participating in full-ice scrimmages although there were a lot of good half-rink games of 2 on 2,� said Janet Bowman, a runner and beginning hockey player.
This first appeared in the 04/1998 issue of Hockey
Player Magazine®
© Copyright 1991-2003, Hockey Player® LLC and Hockey
Player Magazine®
Posted: Nov 2, 2002, 16:37
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