Avoca Hockey Club is looking to appoint a new coach to our Men’s second team. See the full advert below.

Thanks for all your support so far during the Covid and preseason. Nonetheless the start of our season is finally here. Men’s and women’s first and second teams have already started with pre-season and our men’s 4s commenced training last week with a cup final to prepare for.

For the rest of the teams, both junior and senior, we plan to start our season on 30^th August. Times have been allocated and will be made public soon. Coaches will be assigned for each team/group this week.

We have made or are making changes within our coaching structure, and in order to make sure that all of the coaches are up-to-date, we have organising meetings on Sunday 23^rd August in Newpark school covering the following topics:

• Coaching pathway
• Avoca’s technical hockey plan            
• Coaching allocation
• Junior Coordinators

If you would like to attend one of the sessions below, get in touch with our Director of Hockey Rudi Wortmann on doh@avocahockeyclub.ie

• Sunday morning 10.30 – 12.30
• Sunday afternoon 14.00-16.00
• Sunday afternoon 17.00-18.30 (Goalkeepers coaches only)

Ladies 1sts Coaching announcement 2020/2021:

Avoca Hockey Club is pleased to announce the appointment of Noelle Farrell as Ladies 1^st team Head Coach. Noelle takes the Head coach role following 2 seasons as Avoca 1^st team Assistant coach. Noelle brings a wealth of coaching experience. She is the current Irish U17 girls Head Coach, U16 Assistant Coach and Leinster U16 Head coach and completed the Coaches for Europe Development programme in 2018/2019. As a player Noelle represented Leinster at U21 and won an Irish Senior Cup with UCD in 2012, among other honours.

Noelle will be joined on the coaching ticket by Anna Richardson who will take the role of Assistant Coach/player. Anna is another UCD Alumni who returned to her home club last season. As a player Anna has represented Ireland at U21 and U23 level and won back to back EY Hockey League and Irish Senior Cups with UCD in 2017/2018 and EY Champions Trophy in 2017. Anna is Head Coach of Newpark Senior Girls and Assistant Coach of Leinster U16 girls.

All in Avoca wish you the best of luck for the season ahead #Avocaambition

The FIH Academy are running many online workshops / courses at the moment; covering all topics from complete courses to workshops on different aspects of coaching and also umpiring. They are run by experienced tutors and it’s an opportunity to link in with coaches from around the world; creating a good learning environment as there is lots of interaction.

There is project in England called ‘Boing’. It is funded by Sport England as a research project but open to all including those who live in Ireland. It is a resource of an online course and 120 ‘PlayGames’ to help develop Physical Literacy for children in a fun game based manner. Danny Newcombe is one of the creators and tutors is a well regarded hockey coach with Hockey Wales currently. They are great games for warm ups etc, very fun and energising, which will help develop children’s physical literacy at the same time, which is so important for lifelong physical activity. For more information on courses, see here.

Included in the 5 pdf attachments, you will find the full text from Intro, Coaching Philosophy to age appropriate games and exercises for 7-14 year-olds.

It is an ideal ‘Coaching Plan’ for junior hockey programmes to use. Horst Wein (RIP) was a world renowned hockey coach (Germany / Spain men’s national teams) and also football coach (FC Barcelona and many other clubs) and his ideas have been implemented across the world of youth hockey and children’s sport in general. The Intro chapters are very inspiring and Horst uses a ‘Games Based Approach’.