Brussels, 5th November 2021
Tomislav Jamicic and Dick Besters have spent years educating, inspiring, and enthusing EHF member National Associations and young athletes and coaches across Europe. By taking their Hockey Magic Caravan across different regions each summer, co-funded through the EHF Solidarity Grant.
Tomislav takes us through this summer’s activation. “Everything looked like it would be stopped for the second year in a row without a HockeyMagic. But at the beginning of the summer, some light showed up at the end of the tunnel. An email from Slovenian Hockey Federation (ZHNTS)! And a few weeks later we had a plan and for the HockeyMagic Festival in Lipovci, Slovenia.
The goal of this festival was to connect the Slovenian coaches from different clubs, to share with them our experiences in creating fun, challenging, and exciting exercises for young players of different levels, and to inspire them to work on their own development and new ideas as coaches. Twelve youth coaches joined this programme, which is amazing if you realize that Slovenia only has three clubs at the moment.
Practical workshops for coaches were followed by the inclusion of young players who were eager to learn new hockey skills. For the coaches, it was the best way to learn through experience. Small, sided games, out-of-the-box exercises, special scoring skills, magic balls, and hockey tricks of course dominated throughout the festival. There was also time for evaluation, questions, feedback, and learning about their own qualities from their peers.
The HockeyMagic concluded with a festival of matches and a spectacular Balls of Fire exercise. Literally, jaw-dropping for some children. Happy faces and shining eyes were our greatest reward after this enjoyable festival. Many thanks to Sanja, Andrej, and ZHNTS for organizing this event.”
The EHF Solidarity Fund and the Hockey Magic Caravan are available to all EHF member National Associations. For more information please follow this link and interested members can contact EHF Head of National Associations Tom Pedersen-Smith via development@eurohockey.org
