• 07/12/2022
• By wizewebsite
• 429 Views

Children want to do sports, pleases the Plíšek.Jičín's youth has a new philosophy<

Photo: hcjicin.cz

After the lost season, which was accompanied on all fronts by covid, the Hockey Week event took place again. 3,500 children came to domestic stadiums, of which Jičín welcomed the most. The small club in the Czech Paradise is currently working on a newly built philosophy, trying to make up for lost time, and thanks to systematic work, it has achieved a small partial success - 54 children can create a strong class. Youth chief Jan Plíšek reveals more.

Do you consider the highest attendance at Hockey Week in the country a great success? Certainly. For us it has two levels. The first is generally the return of children after covid. It's really positive that so many of them came, because we were a little worried about how the children would react and how they would return to the sport. Such a number shows us that children still want to play sports, which is a huge positive. The second thing is that they want to come to ice hockey, they want to try it out and find out what it's like to be on the ice and skate. In Jičín, we have strong competition from other sports, with which we have to fight. It is therefore very positive for us that they are interested in our sport and perceive it in a way that it could be fun for them and that it could at least be worth trying.

How do you think parents perceive their offspring's return to sports? After all, there is still a question mark around the lockdown. In my opinion, no one, not even the parents, accepts that children cannot play sports again. When we talk about it with them, they all perceive it as the sport must continue to work and it is not even possible for it to stop. We're not even really talking about what would happen if the sport stopped again. We hope that hockey and sports in general will continue to run. We see the consequences of a year's absence from sports everywhere. There is also clearly measured data that shows that stopping the sport was simply wrong. Not playing sports is certainly not good for children.

"Everyone perceives it in the way that it is no longer even possible for the sport to stop. We see the consequences of not playing sports for a year everywhere."

Jan Plíšek

Can you specify the consequences you have in mind exactly? There are a lot of those things and it would be a long debate. Generally, it will be around a significant deterioration in lifestyle. The children lost the movement they were supposed to have, and many of them simply returned in significantly worse shape and without the habits they had before covid. For hockey, this is a significant absence of an entire season, during which the children should have developed and learned the given skills. You can definitely say we've gone back a year and now we have to catch up. The question is whether the children still have a chance to catch up that year. The consequences are tangible and demonstrable. I believe that some research, for example at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports, will only confirm this.

Photo: hcjicin.cz

Do you consider the most fundamental point of negotiation to be that the smallest children can continue to play sports even in the case of restrictions? Definitely. Movement is a basic human need and essential and essential for children. If children don't meet outside and perhaps in clubs, they will not only miss out on movement, but also on friendships, stories and experiences that shape childhood. The consequences can be huge and will have a far-reaching impact that will follow children throughout their lives. But it's not just about sports. Boys and girls didn't meet, and logically they started looking for other alternatives, how to function and how to have fun. Mostly everyone ended up at the computer, which is wrong and the complete opposite of what we're trying to do. Children do not develop a relationship with movement, which is an important part of life and is a fundamental factor in how the child will have a quality life in adulthood. A lot of things will not manifest themselves today, in a year, but perhaps only in adulthood.

You mentioned the fight for children with other sports: What does Jičín offer? We have a lot of competition from other sports here. It is mainly handball, which plays the highest competition here and is certainly the number one sport in Jičín at the moment. Then there is floorball, which is the biggest ice hockey competition in the whole country. There are also sports such as football, athletics, gymnastics. Jičín is not such a big city and there are really a lot of sports here. The children actually have a good enough opportunity to try out what they want, and there was no pressure to choose one or two specific sports. After all, hockey is more demanding, it is not easy to learn to skate. It is more difficult for parents to be at every training session and arrange the children. We have to somehow convince them - certainly much more and more intensively than other sports in Jičín.

Photo: hcjicin.cz

How do you work on it? The important thing is that hockey is still one of the national sports, which is a huge strength in how it is possible to influence parents and children. In short, playing hockey is still a certain prestige with which we try to work, and thereby convince them that playing hockey in Jičín is just as prestigious as playing it anywhere else. Another thing is that we have been trying for the last two years to do intensive and systematic recruitment and generally reach out to children and their parents wherever possible. We try to motivate and convince them to come try hockey with us. But it's not just about that. When parents bring their children, it's important to us that they have fun and want to come back themselves. At the same time, it is important that these activities also make sense to the parents, that they like them and motivate them to want to stay with us. It is such an alchemy of all the different aspects that influence the recruitment of children to clubs. A lot of this is based on the research I did on this topic in my diploma thesis.

"Playing hockey is still simply a certain prestige."

Jan Plíšek

To what do you owe the fact that you have now been able to bring so many children? I don't have an exact answer because we didn't do any retrospective analysis. We systematically worked on it for three to four months, during which we tried to reach children and parents in all possible ways. Promotion and communication on Facebook, improving the quality of the website, visiting schools and kindergartens, placing tarps and banners in frequented places contributed significantly to this. For example, we managed to place our roll-ups in the premises of the hospital where the vaccination was taking place. We systematically made the general public aware that there is hockey here in Jičín, it is worth watching and coming to try it out. The intensive part then took place a fortnight before the hockey week itself.

Less than a month has passed since the event. How many children have continued with you since then? I think that from the original number, twenty to thirty children showed up here in the last fortnight, and I believe that most of them will at least attend the skating school. Only then will they decide if they want to play hockey again. The Hockey Week event was a huge motivation for the kids to come and experience the feeling of the ice, and now it's up to us to keep them playing hockey. Based on the information given to us by the union, I reached out to parents directly last week with an invitation email that included information about other options to continue attending club recruitment with their children.

Photo: hcjicin.cz

How did you enjoy the event? She was great and the atmosphere was sensational. We certainly enjoyed it and we believe that the children and parents did as well. Our goal was to create such an atmosphere that it would truly be an experience for the whole family. I am convinced that if a parent sees their child excited, this is perhaps the most important moment of the whole event for them. As far as organization is concerned, we of course followed the union manual, but we also significantly involved our experience. We tried to make the activities on the ice look pleasant and interesting. The goal was to create a colorful environment. We wanted each station to be motivating for the children, fun for them and not have time to deal with the fact that most of them are standing on skates for the very first time.

Even if fifteen children crystallize out of the thirty, will it be a strong year for you? Definitely. If we manage to have fifteen children in the category, it will be a huge success for Jičín. It would be fine. We hope that we will succeed in building such strong vintages as well. And that's also thanks to events like Come play hockey.

"So we systematically try to support the club's recruitment, but also to raise awareness of hockey among everyone in Jičín and the surrounding area."

Jan Plíšek

How do you deal with the number of children in general? We struggled the most with the fact that during the year of covid, most of the possibilities to reach out to children and do recruitment fell out. As a result, we are essentially missing a year of recruitment, which is clearly reflected in the year of second and third classes. In a small club like ours, the years are supplemented by two to three years, so the annual gap is noticeable. We hope that we will be able to replenish the stock in this way as well. In the other classes, we have the biggest problem with the year 2012, which is the 4th class. On the contrary, in the category of younger pupils, we have exactly the opposite concerns, as we have over twenty players there. The category of older students has approximately fifteen players.

Do you have any cooperation with kindergartens and schools? As far as recruitment is concerned, cooperation is long-term and systematic, we try to communicate with everyone regularly. We are not only appealing to the children, but also to the teachers, so that they are also interested. We develop further cooperation in the form of services, so we organize morning skating for kindergartens and schools in Jičín and the surrounding area, where we teach the smallest children to skate and have a warm relationship with the ice, thereby involving them in the recruitment process. We try to motivate them to come to skating lessons in the afternoon as well. We therefore systematically try to support the club's recruitment, but also to raise awareness of hockey among everyone in and around Jičín.

Photo: hcjicin.cz

Haven't you considered hockey classes? When I came to the club, I set some goals and priorities that I wanted to do. One of these priorities was the creation of sports classes, so negotiations with schools and other sports were started based on that, because it would be difficult for us to make a class of only hockey players. Ultimately it failed on the fact that we are a small club so we wouldn't have the staffing to reasonably keep the sports classes running. So we retreated from that, even though we had positive responses from parents and other sports clubs. So far, we have done it by having morning training sessions, after which the children normally go to school. Nevertheless, we are definitely not giving up on this idea.

Can you outline the key points of your vision? One of the tasks was to set a sports concept that would clearly determine what the club should do, how it should develop and where it should go. We have created a clear philosophy and we are trying to create conditions for children so that they can play sports here. Philosophy is essential for us as a small club.

"The goal is to raise a decent person with a relationship to sports."

Jan Plíšek

What does it consist of? It reads like this: "The goal is to raise a decent person with a relationship to sports." Everything reflects from this. We have three essential points for the preparation training process – fun and emotions, play as a means of developing abilities and skills, and education and socialization. We want friendships to be formed here, so that children can behave in society and learn responsibility. Three sports aspects are specifically related to the training process. The first is ensuring a modern training process and sports trends that we want to include in training. We created a methodology for individual classes and the entire club. We cooperate with the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports, with whom we consulted the test batteries we created for the product categories. Everything took place in consultation with Professor Musálek, for which I thank him very much. We try to maintain modern trends that work here and around the world. At the same time, it was important for me to unify the training process across categories, which is the second sporting aspect. It is essential that in each category it is clearly stated what the child should be able to do. Without it, children have no chance of any reasonable development, and everything is more of a coincidence. The third aspect is general movement development - it is not important that they only know how to play hockey. I know from my own experience that in the end only a few children make a living from hockey, so it is necessary to give them something more in life than just ice and a hockey stick.

Do you cooperate with larger clubs in the area? Yes, but not only with the big ones. With small clubs, we try to develop one of our ideas, for example - to create a regional selection and thus enable better children to train with each other in greater competition and thus motivate them to continue working. My next thought is to create a spring league in some other sport. We have established a very good cooperation with Mlada Boleslaví, with whom we help each other. Our coaches can go to watch training sessions in Boleslav, where their coaches are available for consultations. On the other hand, we offered the young coaches from Boleslav that they could come and practice with us at a smaller club without the pressure that would be put on them in Boleslav. We are trying to develop cooperation in all directions. We want all children to have a choice. To allow the better and more ambitious ones to first develop in our conditions and at the right moment to allow them to leave for a bigger club. At the same time, we want to enable those children who do not have such big ambitions a quality hockey life with us.

Did everyone identify with your concept and adopt it as their own? Of course, a person enters with some ambitions and with some vision, but it changes according to how the environment works and how it is accepted. Some things simply cannot be fulfilled or they are only partially fulfilled. Nevertheless, I did not encounter basically anything in which there was a significant problem. The president of the club, Pavel Vajsejtl, knew what I was entering here with, and I believe that he stands behind me and my vision. I believe that the things we do and want to do here make sense. I would also like to thank the trainers from Jičín, who do a great job here almost for free. I want to emphasize that the coaches here are very high quality and passionate for such a small club. They are open to discussion and new trends, so it was easier to convince them of certain things. In addition, there is also a great group of other people who help us with things around. A big thank you to all of them for that.

Photo: hcjicin.cz

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