I like hockey and I like to play talking about my teammate whenever we encourage each other we always get better I wanted to join because it’s a nice opportunity to learn new sports when I first joined I didn’t even know how to skate and now
Here I am skating very fastly you are a very fast skater I love it so much my mom signed me up at a hockey outside of school and I’m really excited So today we’re here with my hockey program um the program is for grade 6 78 students so at
The beginning of the year we have the kids suited up with all proper fitting equipment that the school provides so if there’s a family that can afford equipment or someone who’s never played hockey before um there’s no barrier there can you tell me a little bit about
Why you wanted to start up a program like this at your school um growing up playing hockey I thought think that it’s really important to be a part of a team and feel that an extracurricular environment that a lot of students don’t get one of my favorite things about the
Program is we have a number of students who joined this year who’ve never skated before and by the end of the season we’re almost at the end of the season now they’ve shown like they they’ve learned how to completely learned how to skate completely learned how to stick
Handle and shoot the puck um and I think it really just introduces the game to a lot of the kids who’ve never experienced it before for example we have one girl here who’s originally from Syria who’s never skated before and every time she sees me in the hallway
She tells me how much she loves hockey and there’s only two more days until hockey day and it just it makes me really happy that growing up playing hockey I was able to introduce the game to people who would never had had access to it before what kind of challenges have you
Faced learning learning the sport and being out here on the ice that sometimes falling on eyes get used to it sometimes your feet hurts but you get used to it and is it worth it all those times falling down and being cold are it still worth it for you yeah it’s
Worth it have there been any challenges or hard Parts about learning to play hockey well of course there are but I like to turn them into a new learning goal for me I think it’s really fun to be a part of the hockey program like be
A role model to the younger people I just like the leadership part of it we want to make sure that we’re helping our team what’s it like for you to come out here every week uh and be with these kids in this hockey program oh it’s
Fantastic we we have a great group at CD how hockey and I was fortunate enough a few years to get involved with the program uh come in and develop and work with the teachers that are in charge and uh the kids are fantastic so they’re learning things
About the game of hockey itself that they can transfer to other games that they play all the invasion Sports have the same concept so that’s really valuable for the kids and in addition to that it’s the intangibles that we try to teach the teamwork the sportsmanship the
Safety components of the game and how to participate with others uh in that team atmosphere so this year we had kids from Egypt and Syria uh we had uh other kids new new Canadian immigrant families and it was so exciting to see them the first time actually see what Ice is like
Artificial ice getting the equipment on they were just excited doing that so for me as a as a coach that’s worked at all levels it’s it’s a way to ReDiscover the game and and get excited about teaching again you want to keep playing hockey as you get older yeah okay like
Professional hockey yeah wow that’s so cool I like to play hockey LIC or not a lot of girls who had joined for the first time this year specifically because I was a female coach um and I think one of the things that I like the most about that is it um also
Expands the game to a lot of a lot of students and then also with the pwhl that was started this year I think it gives uh the girls like something to look up to and look forward to we made sure that every kid in the school who is
Eligible for the program felt that they could come and participate so the program is really about inclusion it’s about Discovery and it’s about working with your your classmates and discovering hockey as a Great Canadian sport hockey thank you so much everyone
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