SEPTEMBER - FEBRUARY
Our House Development Program (HDP) bridges the gap between our Learn to Play Clinic and Travel Hockey. It's a unique approach to mite development. Our program is more specialized as it's girls-only, smaller in scale, and designed to foster a more team-centric culture than a clinic. It offers participants an intense focus on skill development.
The goal is to prepare participants for travel team play. The program is designed for players with a good starting foundation in skating who want to further develop their skills and love for hockey. The learning environment is challenging, positive, and always focused on fun.
Program Overview
HDP will include practice two nights per week, focused on skiill development. In addition to two practices per week, the program will have weekend game opportunities to use their developing skills! Games will be played throughout the season and include a mix of in-house and against other programs.
Highlights
Certified coaches use the USA Hockey American Development Model (ADM) to teach skating and hockey skills through practice and small-area games. The goalie position is introduced, with all participants having a chance to try goaltending.
Registration is limited as the goal is to provide players with an intense focus on skill development and team experience, similar to our travel hockey program.
Curriculum Overview
The cross-ice, small-format games will deliver more puck touches and quickly accelerate development in all areas, including skating, stick handling, shooting, and, most importantly, reaction time.
Hockey is a team sport. Therefore, young players learn the value of lifelong skills like cooperation, building trust, confidence, positive self-esteem, being a team player, responsibility, and sportsmanship.
Coach
Cait Bernick launched our hockey development program last season with much success. She had a blast, and the participants' skill development was accelerated.
Cait played youth hockey in Connecticut and for Daniel Hand High School, where she later coached. She moved on to coach a girl's high school hockey team in Gloucester, Massachusetts, before returning to Connecticut and discovering our all-girls program.
Player Requirements
Some parents ask why their daughter doesn't play full ice games at U8 and younger. According to Rick Gedney, a seasoned Shoreline Sharks coach, "The cross-ice format puts hockey concepts over positional play. Skaters are forced to make plays under constant pressure with maximum puck touches. It's development in its purest form and will help quickly improve the most critical areas of the game."