Nearly 100 young hockey players got to learn from some of the game’s top Dutch coaches at a camp on island last week

Charlotte Van de Vegte and Jeroen Siskens travelled to Bermuda as part of a Sport Ways camp arranged by the Bermuda Hockey Federation to help train coaches and aspiring young players.

Sport Ways, based in Amsterdam, runs coaching clinics around the world, with their technical directors deployed in ten countries including the United States, South Africa and Hong Kong.

Van de Vegte, 24, and Siskens, 31, were on island for a week and they were impressed with the skills of Bermuda’s young people on their first visit to the island.

“What strikes us is the mindset and the way most of the kids are training,” Siskens said.

“They are open to learning and listening well. The same goes for the coaches, as you have some quite young coaches and they are developing really quickly.

“They are learning fast with the right tools. All the boys who already think they know it all, their mindset is closed and they are not learning as fast, but the middle age groups are learning and taking in the tips we give them.

“The same goes for the 16 and 17-year-old coaches who have not been coaching very long, but we have seen them growing every day.”

Coaching the coaches is as much part of Sport Ways’s ethos as training the players, with “Day Zero”, the day before the first day of sessions, considered the most important part of week.

“When coaches coach other coaches there is not only a lot of learning but there is a lot of inspiration,” Van de Vegte said.

“So before the first day of the camp we have something called Day Zero, which is a day with all the coaches, where we do some presentations about mindset and how we want drills to be taught and the best way to do it.

“It was really nice to see that the Bermuda coaches before we even had to say it, they had their notebooks out and during the camp they are asking for advice and feedback. It’s important for them to get the experience of coaching and a week of a Sport Ways camp is hugely intense in the amount you are learning but it stays with you for ever.”

The two coaches do not just deliver the sessions, they plan them alongside more than 20 other technical directors at an annual camp in Barcelona before rolling them out across them globe.

“All of us TDs are total hockey nerds,” Van de Vegte said. “Whenever we are together we will talk only about hockey, the matches, the drills and the training because we love it.

“It is so unforced and it’s nice to be in an environment where everybody has the exact same passion and mindset and wants to keep improving themselves and each other. We never can get enough of it.”

It was noticeable at the Bermuda sessions just how many boys were involved with the BHF keen to provide a pathway into the men’s national team. Siskens, obviously, has experience of choosing hockey over other sports and is keen to point out the advantages.

“My whole family played, so it made sense for me,” Siskens said.

“The ratio is about 70 per cent women and 30 per cent men in Holland and at this camp it looks about the same.

“That can actually be a good thing because you have a more select group of men, you are more closely knit and grow together because you have picked this sport over football and, to be honest, as a young boy if you go to the hockey field and there are a lot of girls that is going to be a lot of fun.”

Van de Vegte and Siskens both played hockey to a high level but insist that they find more joy out of training others than playing a match-winning role for their team.

“It’s a certain type of player that becomes a coach,” Siskens said. “It’s the ones who ask questions, wants to know more and wants to have influence. I remember when I was 14 going to my coach and telling him that we needed to play with this particular line-up.

“He basically told me I could only have a say when I was the coach, so I became one. A player that does not only think about themself but thinks about how to help other players will turn to coaching and love it.

“I started coaching when I was 13 and now teaching a kid, seeing him try, seeing him succeed and seeing the happiness on his face, the satisfaction that gives is better than scoring a goal in a match.”