Our Motivational Monday story comes from The Italian Hockey Academy – Learning from the best to become like them!
What shall we do to improve our hockey performances and take our game to the next level? What shall we do in order for our national team to finally compete against the best teams in the world?
The answer is easy: we should learn from the best ones. It is in part from this idea that the Italian Federation started to create the National Hockey Academy for the high training of young people. The main purpose of the Academy is to provide help and support in the development of promising young players. To achieve this goal, the Italian Hockey Federation has decided to establish a cooperation between Italy and the Netherlands, by creating a partnership with Dutch hockey academies.
At first, the Academy will train a new class of federal coaches, who in turn will have to train new young talents, in all the fields of the Areas recognized as centres of academic training in Italy – which ideally represent the Italian hockey world skills.
On 23rd February 2016, twelve members of our technical staff left for Bloemendaal, where they took part in the first training event under the supervision of star player and now successful coach Teun de Nooijer – winner with the Dutch national team of two gold medals at the Olympics of 2000 and 2004 and two silver medals in 2008 and 2012 and EHF Hall of Famer.
Over a week of hard work, our coaches learned the techniques in use by one the major hockey centres worldwide and will then pass them on to young Italian players, on the occasion of monthly events that have already been scheduled. Also, over the next months, Teun de Nooijer himself will come to Italy and verify the state of the art of the program.
The Italian men’s national team currently ranks 34th in the world ranking of field hockey, while the women’s team ranks 16th. Our goal is, in the years to come, to finally have one of our national teams compete at the Olympics. Learning from the best ones and what a good place to start with the Legend that is Teun de Nooijer.
Thanks to Giulia della Motta, Chair of the Italian Communications Committee for this inspiring story and certainly one that will motivate all of us.
A reminder of the brilliance of Teun de Nooijer, we can’t agree more that learning from Teun must be a great start!
Have a look!