Dear 10U Team RED Parents,

On behalf of Coach Chelsea and myself, welcome to the 2018/19 Fall hockey season. I am a USA Hockey, level 4 certified coach, working to complete level 5, and looking forward to coaching your son or daughter. This is my seventh year coaching at various levels, mostly with my older children. Professionally I am in the military. This will be Coach Chelsea’s 4th season coaching with RHL and is a level 2 USA hockey certified coach. She has coached 2 years of mites and this will be her second year coaching squirts. She grew up playing travel hockey in CT and also played on her colleges club hockey team. Outside of the hockey world she has just begun her 4th year teaching Kindergarten teacher in Prince William County!

SportsEngine:
The league uses SportsEngine to manage schedules and communication. You should receive an invite to join the team soon; if you do not, please let me know as I plan to use it as my primary means of communication. There is also an app for your smartphones.

Safety:
Please make sure to check your players equipment if you haven't already as they grow A LOT at this age. Please make sure all equipment that is certified (helmets have a certification sticker with an expiration date) is current, it fits properly, and that it covers the area it is intended to protect.

Admin:
We will likely practice at 7PM on Monday evenings. Game times will vary but should be Saturday afternoons. We will likey hold an OPTIONAL dryland session some weeks and more information will be made available if we do. We will also ask the players to arrive a little early for the first game so we can walk through off-sides and basic alignment.

Below are links to some videos that may help at least some of the players figure things out a bit quicker.

offsides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU-IKTT-7zI
wingers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikqt_iY4nSA
center: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1BN-Om5i6Q
defensemen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aXsrNrT5RI

Coaching Philosophy:
My coaching philosophy is to set the conditions were each player is able to improve, maximize their potential, stay positive and try to make sure the kids have fun. To help accomplish that goal we will focus on fundamentals and in particular the ABCs (agility, balance and coordination) at practice. You'll see us doing stations with a mix of ABCs and competition / games to improve while having fun. Success is each player has improved, hopefully a lot, by the end of the year. We plan to establish a position rotation for games so each player has an opportunity to learn them.

Please send me a note if you can't make practice or a game. We completely understand that everyone is busy and have other things to do and expect players to mix, .we just want to know so we can plan accordingly. I have 3 kids, all doing multiple sports so both Maddy and I will miss some practices and games.

As for goalies, let us know if your player wants to play goalie and we will work to get them in at least once.

We look forward to meeting each of you and a great hockey season.

Best wishes,

Brad and Chelsea