Blue Jackets Hockey League Car Ride Podcast

Episode 8 - Sportsmanship

This weeks episode is a deeper dive into sportsmanship. We define sportsmanship as a part of the J.A.C.K.E.T.S. Way and from the literature around youth sports. We also get into how good sportsmanship benefits us as individuals in and out of the sport of hockey. We finish the episode off talking about how we as coaches can teach sportsmanship through modeling good behavior, reinforcing good sportsmanship, and taking an educational approach to bad sportsmanship.

Episode 7 - Team Building

This episode is all about team building. An important topic, especially with many teams adding a few new players or being a new team altogether. Team building is a crucial part of developing a positive team dynamic, something that helps kids feel more accepted on their team, increases improvement, and helps with performance in hockey and beyond. We touch on what team building is compared to team bonding, what to consider with the timing of team building events, other key factors, and then a few example activities to work on communication, trust, group success, and more.

Episode 6 - Positive Self Talk

This weeks focus is on positive self-talk, an important tool to help athletes face competition anxiety, build confidence, and help motivation. We start with defining self-talk and the different variations and functions it has. Then we talk about what we as coaches can do to make it easier for our players to have positive self-talk and build their skills of self-talk. The reflection challenge this week is looking at how we as coaches can recognize moments in the past where we have let athletes been negative towards themselves and how we can help them change that view to something more positive and useful.

Episode 5 - Communication and Interaction

Welcome back to the Blue Jackets Hockey League Car Ride Podcast! This episode we talk about communication and interaction, using Kaupilla's Wheel of Interaction [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C5tl12a3OP8VoYuit4W3OzPaWVG_H5My/view?usp=share_link] as a tool we coaches can use to deal with different situations with our athletes. The challenge this episode is to reflect back on any difficult interactions you have had with athletes and if/how you could have handled them differently. Then think about how you might handle it again using the wheel for the next time you are in that situation! Thanks for listening!

Episode 4 - Building Questioning Skills

How can we build our questioning skills as coaches? We tackle this question in this episode by sharing three essential things to do when asking questions to athletes. We talk about getting away from short conversations with closed questions and how to get more focus on the understanding from our athletes. We finish with some quality leads from the USCCE and USA Hockey and a simple process to follow to have engaging conversations focused on the athlete's learning and thinking. The coaching challenges this week include: * Have a list of questions ready to go for your activity * Engage in a questioning sequence and conversation with an athlete that helps them reflect and learn * Reflect on your own practice and how well you are asking questions, you can record yourself and listen back as well!