With the goal of increasing the number of local skaters on the team, and giving back to the community, the coaches of the Olds Grizzlys are developing a new mentorship program aimed at minor hockey associations.
With the goal of increasing the number of local skaters on the team, and giving back to the community, the coaches of the Olds Grizzlys are developing a new mentorship program aimed at minor hockey associations.
Dana Lattery, an assistant coach with the Grizzlys, said while the team has offered informal mentorship in the past to coaches and players in minor hockey, the idea of a more structured program came up following a town hall meeting the Grizzlys hosted in April.
The team was questioned at the meeting as to why there are so few local players on the squad and Lattery said he and the Grizzlys' other coaches sat down and looked at ways they could bolster the number of Olds players on the team's roster.
At the end of last season, there were five players from Olds skating for the Grizzlys.
Since all the coaches came up through the minor hockey system, he added, they decided a mentorship program for coaches and players was the best avenue forward.
The first stage of the proposed program would be to invite minor hockey coaches to attend Grizzlys practices and games and give them the opportunity to observe junior A level coaches in action and ask questions.
"We want them to pick our brains about why we do stuff, why we run our practices like we do, why we run our drills like we do, how we do player development throughout a season," Lattery said, adding he believes such a system would be "a relationship that will benefit both of us" as the Grizzlys could also see how minor hockey coaches are developing players at an earlier level.
Such a system would also give minor level coaches an idea of what junior level coaches are looking for in players and they can in turn bring that knowledge back to their own players.
The second stage includes allowing minor level players, through a draw, to spend an entire game day with the Grizzlys.
"They show up at five o'clock, get to go do jump-around with the guys," Lattery said. "They get to watch the guys tape their sticks, they get to sit in on the pre-game meeting, they get that full experience instead of just showing up for warm up."
On top of that, he added, the Grizzlys are looking at having minor hockey teams from throughout Mountain View County come to Grizzlys home games, giving the players a chance to wear their jerseys in the stands and after the game the team can go into the dressing room and have player cards signed and take pictures with the Grizzlys.
"Stuff where they can go down to the room and see what it's like, see what they're playing hockey for."
Lattery said the third stage is to have Grizzlys players "softly, loosely" assigned to a minor level team in Olds where they could attend road games, practices or other functions, as long as it doesn't conflict with the Grizzlys' schedule.
"They're there to be there and if the coach wants to use them to demonstrate a drill, if he wants to use them to work with a player on something," he said. "We don't want to take away from what the players are doing. We don't want to tell the coaches what to do. We're not here to coach the coaches, we're here to have an open door."
All minor level coaches have to do if they're interested, Lattery added, is call the Grizzlys and the invitation is open to all teams in the county.
"In our county down here, that we can help develop those younger kids so that in 10 years you start to see five or six kids play on the Olds Grizzlys, and that's the only way we're going to know that that's successful."
He said the team has not yet approached the Olds Minor Hockey Association (OMHA), or any other minor hockey organizations in the region, about the mentorship concept.
But the Grizzlys coaches had a meeting on July 2 where it was decided that Joel Hunter, the team's business operations manager and an OMHA midget A coach, will speak with representatives from local minor hockey organizations.
Les Dodd, president of the OMHA, said he had not heard of the Grizzlys plans yet but added he was "open and encouraged to any kind of hockey development for all age groups in our association."
"That's what we're about is skill development for the kids, for them to develop their skills and become better players and that means going up and through the ranks of different levels of hockey and potentially playing for the Grizzlys or an equivalent level," he said.
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