Scottish Ice Hockey are pleased to announce the return of our National Development Days.
This season, NDD will return to Dumfries Ice Bowl, which in turn has allowed the leadership team to implement changes to the programme.
SIH Head of Hockey Operations Jamie Thomson said: “The national programme has been successful over the years and has given us a foundation to build on.
“Not many governing bodies or associations are able to bring players together monthly over multiple age groups and let them compete against other athletes at the highest level.
“The progression of this starts now and after conversations with coaches and the NDD leadership team, I am delighted to announce the changes made and the dates for the season ahead.”
The first change is the age groups and in line with our leagues, the GB programme and the rest of Europe, we have moved the age groups to U12, U14, U16 and U18.
In addition, we are adding a U10 session that all registered players of that age group are welcome to join.
We will make this available to book via webform as soon as possible and these will be skill based sessions with some x ice over the season.
We have programmed this into the middle of the day to allow kids from all over to participate plus we would encourage any LTP, U10, U12 team coaches to come along and see what we are doing to take back to club level.
We have also added a netminder specific session, something we have been lacking in the past so over the season we have introduced as many of these sessions as we could to allow goalies to get the focus they need.
What are we trialling for?
This is the first question on everyone’s minds. We are looking to continue with the SIH Nationals weekends that started last season.
Ice is booked for age groups 12 – 18, invitations have been extended to other associations and we are also looking for European/North American teams to come across and take part. These weekends are our goal this season.
There will also be other options abroad explored but given the cost of living and everything else at the moment, it doesn’t feel right to put added pressure on people by saying we are going abroad and you must commit etc. We want to encourage players to take part, not have them miss out so we will look at options for this.
Jamie added: “I have been involved in the national programme for over 10 years now and believe with the additional coaches, new structure and format, we are in a strong place.
“I urge all clubs and members to support it moving forward and gain the benefit of all the work that goes into it.”
Emails will go out to all clubs this week confirming timetable, criteria for selection and asking for names for each age group and we look forward to welcoming all selected-on October 30th”
Dates for the Diary – Venue Dumfries Ice Bowl
Sunday October 30th
Sunday November 27th
Thursday 29th December
Saturday 28th January
Sunday 26th February
Sunday 26th March
Monday 1st May
