B2H: Our Coaching Scheme and its Success
By Roger Hitch
The club has a large pool of professional coaches from which all training groups are allocated coaches as required. B2H, a mixed gender group, currently has two senior coaches, two junior coaches and two assistant coaches who take control of up to three hours coaching/game play each week. Our 11s Winter Series gives us a further six sessions this season with tournaments and overseas visits adding to the list.
Over our three (school) terms, we provide 21 hours of skills training, 82 hours of Game Play training, 26 hours of competitive 7s matches and two hours of competitive 11s matches. We owe a debt of gratitude to Coaching Director, Will Fulker, for overseeing our coaching needs, pitch allocation, occasionally taking a Saturday Game Play session and providing continuing support to our group. To see the successes that we have achieved with our coaching scheme, read on…
At the start of season 2022/23 we had one coach, Tarek Abdulla, who provided coaching for the varied skill levels that were among the 25 or so members. As the membership slowly increased, another coach, Billy, was allocated to the group together with a few temporary coaches when unavailability occurred. At the end of 22/23 we had 35 active members and were comfortably supported with the two coaches.
Having decided to re-enter a B2H Men’s 7s side into the SHC Summer League Level 1 (MSL23), it was clear that we needed to train together as a team, so Josh Blair suggested that we start a Saturday morning one hour session dedicated to Game Play (GP) to learn the different way of playing in a fast-paced environment. To achieve this, we employed coach Ali Hitch (ex-Premier Division M1s player) who moulded the team over the season using opposition from our own ranks. This proved successful as in one SL23 game we were 5-4 up against the eventual winners before coming third out of four in the league rounds against the bottom three club league teams! The morale of the team could not have been higher throughout and a great spirit was forged which echoed throughout the B2H group.
It was clear that consistent training together was the main contributor to the MSL23 match successes coupled with custom printed black B2H playing shirts that were provided, making the team stand out against the other club sides.
As season 2023/24 got under way, the active membership rose to 42 and with the skills gap widening, we split the training session into two to create the Advanced (ADV) and Base Technical Level (BTL) groups. Tarek continued with the BTL group aided by B2H member Chris Carr, recently qualified as an SHC Junior coach, alongside three other B2H members. Increasing the knowledge of base skills coaching for as many members who are interested, enables our sessions to employ more assistant coaches on one-to-one instruction situations for our lesser skilled BTL players, when appropriate. The Advanced group was coached by Alex Richards who not only developed the small sided game play but introduced many modern playing techniques that most members in the group had not experienced before. The standard of game play skills increased significantly over the season for this group moulding them into a great fighting force supported by the Pitch 3 Saturday Game Play sessions, which now form a staple part of our coaching scheme. As a result of the concentrated coaching provided over the season, we were able to enter both a Women’s and Men’s SL24 team into the SHC Summer Leagues.
The WSL24 Women’s game play, although finally coming 10/10, was astonishingly good as they drew 3-3 with a W9 team (two league teams above them) and only lost 1-3 against the Jags (six league teams above them)… how good was that! These successes were again down to the commitment by the team to attend training session where the playing bonds were established both on and off the pitch, showing how important group training is. The Saturday GP sessions were a vital part of the preparation during our May/June/July third ‘summer term’.
The MSL24 Men continued to train well during the season forming a close group maintaining the morale carried over from the previous years. Like the women, attention to coaching session attendance was important to ensure that the new team players integrated into the team enabling them to know what their team mates’ jobs were in the competition matches. As a result, this year the Men won their SL24 league outright, winning the final by 7-2, pushing the opposition, from the three leagues above them into second, third and last places. This result was achieved by the hard work of the coaches, players themselves, their B2H training opposition teams and all the support given by the members both before and during the matches. We ended season 23/24 having had 93 enquires to join B2H.
Season 2024/25 got under way and to date we have had a further 42 enquiries. The active membership has now risen to 65 with a further 13 waiting to finish their trial sessions of B2H and with the skills gap widening, we have split the training session again, now into three to create the Advanced, Base Technical Level and New-to-Hockey (NTH) groups. We now have a complete change of coaches with Nick Nurse and Max Anderson, both M1s who have captained England U21, allocated to the ADV and BTL respectively with Roger Hitch taking the NTH players for a short introduction to the basics of stick holding and body position for the fundamental actions of playing hockey. We are already seeing a different approach to training content which has been widely accepted by the members and follows on from the excellent training scheme we have had during the previous seasons.
Next week’s article is entitled “Pathway to the Leagues” where we explain how we integrate our developing players into the main club sides.