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14/16U Q-and-A: Making Dreams Come True

10/26/2015, 9:30am MDT
By Bob Mancini, ADM Regional Manager

Q: What else can I do to help my teenage children fulfill their hockey dreams?

A: This is a question many parents ask at the 14U/16U stage of development. They’ve already invested much in the game through the years. They’ve nurtured their child through the beginner stages into a more advanced environment, with more experienced coaches who hopefully run terrific practices and manage games expertly. So what more can a parent do for the teenager who really wants to become a great hockey player?

It’s a natural question for parents who want the best for their child and are accustomed to supporting their development to this point. But this is the age where we, as parents, must help our children understand that the responsibility for their development shifts to them. It’s the stage where their commitment, not the parents’ commitment, will determine the level of hockey achievement.

Research shows that the development key for this age group is to begin focusing on various aspects of fitness in addition to skill development. Players who learn to take responsibility for their own development, including in the fitness aspects, will most likely progress further in their development than players who do not.

Although this increase in development responsibilities may result in increased training demands on young players, high-performance recommendations can and should be viewed as a weekly program that may be completed through a number of different sources, e.g., physical education in school, sports clubs and/or participation in complementary sports, which is still to be encouraged at this stage. For this reason, efforts should be made to manage individual players’ sporting, academic and social commitments in order to achieve balance. This is particularly important for talented players who may be accessing coaching via different sources, potentially in more than one sport.

Although this is the stage at which the long-term athlete development model for hockey differentiates its content to provide guidance for all players (standard content) and those who aspire to become elite performers (high-performance content), it’s recognized that there are many players who still possess the potential to become elite performers. For this reason, it’s important to maintain a long-term view and encourage teens to take responsibility for their own development, not only on the ice, but also in terms of strength and conditioning.


The author, Bob Mancini, is a longtime hockey coach and player-development expert. His experience includes two seasons in the NHL as an Edmonton Oilers development coach and more than a decade as a head coach in the NCAA Division I and OHL ranks.

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