A 14 year old Goalie on a District-Bound team? I need help!?!?

Question

Alright, here it is: I'm 14, a goalie, female, and on a 19U girls district bound team. As of yesterday, I am the main goalie. The other goalie (19 years old) has no commitment to the team and has only showed up twice and somehow got to play more then me and I have been there. Coach told me yesterday that from here on out I will be the goalie whether or not the other shows up. I know the girls are happy about this because the other one is a real female dog (excuse my language). Therefore, I have a huge support team (most of the girls are 17, 18).

So, my questions: How to I have confidence in myself when everyone around me does (coaches, players, and parents)? How should I train to keep in top shape? I don't get to get on the ice but once a month, so everyday I do 160 up-downs and have 150 pucks thrown at me. What can I do for hand-eye coordination? Strenght? Anything?

Please, I am so nervous about this and districts are the end of February. Eek! Please help me!!

Answer 1

well you've gotta try and get as much ice time as you can -- try to find some pick-up leagues or guys who just rent the ice regularly for shinny hockey. They always need goalies, don't care who it is either.

Also, put on the 'sponge pads' and have friends take shots at you in street hockey with tennis ball or street hockey ball.

For training (GOOD FOR EYE-HAND), grab a tennis ball, stand 4-5 feet from a wall and throw the tennis ball underhand off the wall and catch it with the opposite hand, then quickly throw it with the same hand you caught the first throw with. Continue alternating the throwing and catching. Your hand-eye coordination will improve rapidly...and you will be able to verify this because you will notice yourself getting faster and faster.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU.

and remember, as for confidence,...you know if you have the talent to be a good goalie, so just go out and stop pucks. But don't forget, the team in front of you is responsible for the goals against average. Your job is to play your best.

Even Patrick Wah (Roy) got beat 10-1 or so in his last game with Montreal ------- it was just 'a' game -- he was still the best and went on to win many more cups.

Answer 2

I understand what you mean, I used to play goalie also. The confidence factor just has to be there. You have to be confident in yourself, you have be in a state of mind that when you go out on the ice you have to know your better than the other team and you have to have an attitude about you that shows that you have confidence in yourself, and once people see that you'll be just fine.

For the training, you want to get on the ice, but you also want to do some off ice training. For on the ice just work on side to side movement and your speed. You want to be able to get up off the ice quickly. For the speed /stamina do laps, or go running around outside for a while. Whatever you can do will help.

Hand-eye coordination is crucial to being a goaltender. There are a few things you can do to help. First taking shots will help, but if your coordination is no good to start, well than thats not going to do anything. One drill I used to do was i would get one friend to stand behind me and he would throw a tennis ball at the wall and after one bounce i would try to catch it with my hand. Do that until you can catch the ball consistantly and another thing is taking 3 tennis balls and juggling them against a wall. That is hard but if you can do that you'll be fine.

Just remember train hard and get a good warmup before the game and you will be fine. Just remember, if you can instill in your mind that you are a great goalie and that you are the best, the willingness to do all the training and all the hard work will become fun to do.

Regards.

Answer 3

Start out by asking your coach what you need to work on. Then for strength ask for someone to spot you and do squats and cleans with a slightly lighter weight than what you can do at your max and slowly work up to more and more repitions so that you will build muscle but still keep flexibility. Keep doing your normal activities and you'll be on the ice more since you will be in practice full time as the goalie.

There is a reason everyone has confidence in you. Your on time, dedicated, seek above and beyond what is expected of you, and seem to be worried for no real reason. Just concentrate on those qualities you do possess and I think you'll gain confidence.

Answer 4

Well I am a goalie too and I am currently recovering from an injury, you gotta get on the ice more, it is different to play on the road then on the ice. Just don't think about the pressure, when your out there focus on one thing and that is to stop the puck, nothing else.

For hand eye co-ordination what I do is actually ping-pong, it really helps you out there. For strenght just lift weights. Another tip is to find your own pre-game ritual. It helps to give you a mental edge. I just stare at our team logo in the locker-room for exactly 10 minutes, and I am fine mentally. Other than that good luck!

Answer 5

I was once a goalie as well. I used to play games in 5 minute segments. If I broke a game down into small parts I found it to be more successful.
I used to warm up my reflexes by bouncing a tennis ball off the wall and alternate catching it in either hand.
The key is to focus, before the game picture yourself making those saves.
Never ever picture yourself being scored on!
Focus on your angles and being square to the shooter.
Remain loose and know that you are the best goalie on the ice.

Answer 6

Try to remain calm when in a game stay relaxed. keep going to your practices and who knows things might work out and you could get your team to win alot. you should also be happy that your gonna play so obviously your doing somthing right. as of training i wouldn't really worry just keep doing what the coaches tell you to and maybe ask the coach what you can do to get better. remember to stay calm though seemed like you were getting a little scared when you should be happy. come on 14 years old playing with 17+. and if your starting your doing somthing right so keep it up.

Answer 7

It seems like what you want to do is concentrate on your off ice traning. Strength, flexibility, and fitness are all things that supplement your on ice training, but at the end of the day, without ice time and practice, that only takes you so far.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but I really don't see any reflection of the importance of this to anyone else but yourself, when, as you state you only get on the ice 1x a month. I grew up playing hockey, played Div 1AA hockey in college, and played in a junior national championship. I played hockey pretty much year round. In the winter I played on both a high school team, and for a club. When I was your age, I also attended a summer hockey camp. I'd estimate between practices and games, I was on the ice anywhere from 4 --7x per week. If you're not getting ice time at least once or twice a week, you're pretty much kidding yourself, as you will never rise beyond marginality, despite all your off ice training.

As for my observations over the years about Goalies -- I obviously had to oppose them. I also had the perspective of having a younger brother who was a goalie, who played college hockey and was drafted by the NHL, and who played along side a guy who went on to be an NHL all star and stanley cup winner. I know how they trained, who they were coached by, and played against them both at various times when I was your age. I also was a "shooter" at a goalie camp run by a famous ex-NHL goalie. This was 4 weeks, of basically on a daily basis shooting on goalies, helping put them through drills, and testing them in "shoot out" scenarios. I can tell you that this camp included some 60 goalies from across the states and Canada. I learned a lot of interesting things about the intrinsic weaknesses and exploitation strategies of goalies. Aside from natural ability, what often seperates good goalies from bad is that amount of coaching and mentoring they recieve from coaches with expertise in the specialized role that a goalie provides. The modern era of goalie specialization pretty much started with Jacque Plante, one of the all time great goalies, the guy who started the trend of goalies wearing masks, and who popularized the idea that there is a technique and science to goal tending that can be passed down. Plante wrote a book on the subject that you should see if you can pick up, as its the cornerstone of traditional goalie strategy.

With that said, there's only so much you can teach yourself. It's exceedingly hard to realize what you're doing wrong in terms of angles, positioning, and basic strategy. The toughest goalies do a couple of things really well. Here's some good tips:

Angles angles angles. Know them, play them.

Watch the shooter's eyes/face. When shooters look down, they're usually about to shoot. Good goalies know this, and will do things like come towards the shooter to eliminate space.

Run the defense. Tell the defense what you want and expect. My attitude with goalies was basically: I'm expecting you to play the angle. If it's a 2 on 1, I'm going to try and cut off the cross pass... so I'll push the attacker out, guard the lane, and let you take the shot. If you're playing your angles right, the shooter is going to run out of space and shoot one right into your equipment.

Whatever the agreement on how to handle the situations you will face, what you want is to be able to know what the defense will do in any situation and vice versa.

Focus on the basics. Squaring up, having a solid stick placement, that's firm and dependable.

Having a glove hand position that goes from low to high.

Practice stacking on each side.

Good goalies control the flow of play by controlling stopages, and controlling rebounds. As an example, my brother and the other goalie, as well as goalies who played on teams I played on would practice things like kicking pucks into the stands. They could do this repeatedly on routine shots if they wanted. Most goals are scored on rebounds. The difference between an average goalie and a good one, usually comes down to how well the goalie controls the puck after the initial save.

Good goalies are agile around the net. They stop dump ins and wrap arounds, and understand those fundamentals.

Get your post to post movement down. There's a reason you see the pros going through the ritual where they move repeatedly from post to post, in and out, side to side, so that they innately know where the posts are at all times.

If you can't get the ice time you really need, at least be a student of the game. Understand that your role is to provide dependability and consistency. There's nothing worse than a goalie who makes 10 amazing saves, and lets in the game losing goal on a softie that went short side because the goalie missed his angle or didn't have his stick on the ice. Nobody remembers the 10 dazzling saves, they remember the crappy goal that lost the game for the team. Your objective, within the parameters you describe should be pursuit of that "solid dependable steady" approach that has already got you a position on the team.

One last comment: while I know that boys hockey and girls hockey are two very different games, I do have some perspective on the age difference between you and the "other goalie." In high school I played on the varsity team starting at 13. I had great skills in terms of speed, stick handling and shooting for my age which is why I made the team in the first place, but I was physically, much weaker and smaller than a lot of the older players in the league, and quite honestly, I barely survived that year. I got crushed on a regular basis by players with 4-5 years on me. I was brutalized and beat up, and it was not a lot of fun. That's just a fact of life. It's quite possible that the other goalie just simply is better than you right now, purely because she's bigger, older, stronger and more seasoned. There's nothing to be ashamed of if that's true. The question is: can you deal with the truth, whatever it may be? Ultimately you would want to win the starting spot because you're the best goalie, not the only one who shows up consistently. Playing with girls who are that much older than you is a great challenge, but try and keep it in perspective. There's a huge difference in physical maturation that will occur in the next few years.

I'll leave you with the thought that you've taken on what I consider to be one the the most difficult positions that exists in the world of sports. There's nothing quite like it, and I have a lot of respect and admiration for the people who have done it. Like most players, I put on the pads a few times over the years, and I'll always remember the feeling of complete ineptitude that overwhelmed me, as I flailed about like a fish, and missed puck after puck.

Best of luck. ;)

Answer 8

I know one thing you should do...throw a tennis ball against the wall and catch it with your hands as you sit knee bent adjacent from the wall your throwing at...dont be nervous, you got this ****...