2 seasons following COVID-lockdown the RBIHF is putting now more effort than ever before in development of players, coaches, bench officials and youth referees.
The RBIHF Player development program includes since last year all major competitive age groups U14, U16, U18 and U20. The HELLO PLAYER program founded by Johan Bollue provides at season end 3on3 hockey for U14, Evaluation days for U16 and U18 including multiple Hello Hockey development camps. Last summer Hello Player also organised a National Goalie development summer camp that will be continued.
The goal of the program is to prepare players for a National Team selection, improve our International Ranking and further increase the overall image of our Belgian National team.
Hello Player head coach Marc Fransen added ‘Players are selected based on their individual results during the National Evaluation events in September. During the camps we get to know the players and players get to know us as a coach. The better we know our players the easier it becomes to make a strong selection. During the weekends we have over 12 hours of on ice practice and games, we have clinics on Health, injury prevention, pre-season workouts and more.
Camps are always very intense for the players (and coaches), we see a lot of talent on the ice, eager to learn and motivated to make it as a National Team player.
Discipline and teamwork are the 2 key factors during these camps.
We hope all players go to work in their clubs and show us some results next Camp, we still have a long way to but start to see some initial results’
Marc Fransen is also the Head Coach of the National Team U18 program together with Bob Moris Jr.
In January the U18 National Team will start their team preparations for the World Championships later next year.