Individual skills are the foundation for the next level of coaching, which are Game Skills. Many players are utilizing skills coaches to help them throughout the year. Goalies are often working with a goalie coach, and there are many programs devoted to off-ice training and strength training and conditioning. In order to take advantage of higher skilled players, youth and high school coaches are faced with a challenging proposition about how to best teach their players how to use these individual skills to play the game effectively as a team.

First, a thank you

In my last blog I wrote about my son's back injury and the start of physical therapy, but before I report on his progress, I want to extend a special thank you to everyone who contacted me after reading my blog post. My intuition told me that the fractured spine he suffered is an injury that has affected many other youth athletes and families. I was completely overwhelmed by the number of people who called, emailed, IM'd, commented on the blog site, or ran me down (figuratively, at least) in the grocery store to ask about my son. Thank you all so much.

This week and last, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Child is meeting to review the progress made under provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. 194 nations will participate, except for three, which have yet to ratify the CRC: Somalia, South Sudan, and the United States.*

On May 7, Helena Costa became the first female to coach a professional men's soccer team in the history of the sport in France. I was thrilled to read the announcement, not only because its historic importance, but because of what did not include: completely absent from the article was any mention of her height, body style, hair color, fashion sense, or other meaningless traits too often included in articles involving women. Even better, there was no suggestion that Costa was bossy; at least not yet, and hopefully  not ever! Bravo, Coach Costa! Bravo!

The six-game Stanley Cup conference semi-final series between the Minnesota Wild and the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks was really exciting, no matter how disappointed fans in Minnesota were at the outcome (the Blackhawks won the series, 4 games to 2).

As a longtime student and teacher of the game, I had to admire the level of play and skills on display night after night. It was high speed chess, as the home team coaches tried to match lines and get an edge over the other team.