PlayHard Hockey Program Philosophy – Duane Eldridge

In helping to establish the PlayHard ‘philosophy’ of building and educating better players, we observed various hockey programs over a three year period. In doing so we also took the opportunity to solicit feedback from the parents of players participating in these skating programs. We did our homework and in doing so noted several trends; the single largest detractor for your child to fully benefit from participating in a hockey program is too many students with too little individual instruction. We also noted some hockey programs will have a player work hard; however there is no effort to teach and develop ‘hockey sense’ to complement the physical skills. In understanding this, we developed our programs around the belief that to have a player reach his or her true potential, you need to develop not only the student’s physical skills but their ‘hockey sense’ as well. In order to achieve this, PlayHard believes you need to adhere to smaller class sizes and focus on individual on-ice instruction. We believe the PlayHard philosophy will set us apart from other hockey camps; helping our students and ultimately your player reach their full potential.

PlayHard hockey programs are designed with two main goals in mind. Our first goal is to teach the physical skills required to play the game of hockey, our second goal is to teach the players how to apply these skills in game situations. We believe the best approach to succeeding in these goals is by having classes limited to 16 students with a strict adherence and commitment to a 4:1 student-instructor ratio. This commitment to class size facilitates increased opportunities for individual player attention and affords PlayHard instructors more opportunities to critique and correct thus ensuring students both learn, work hard and have fun.

As part of PlayHard’s commitment to our students and to ensure they continue to develop their skills and hockey knowledge, we are continually updating our knowledge of the latest teaching and training methods for hockey.