Home » Sport » Ice Hockey World Cup 2022 | Zábranský: We need success. It will attract children and calm the storm and the chaos in Czech hockey

Ice Hockey World Cup 2022 | Zábranský: We need success. It will attract children and calm the storm and the chaos in Czech hockey

The big mission begins on Saturday and Zábranský knows that the ten-year wait for the medal is killing Czech hockey. “We are a hockey and football nation and we need success. Parents must see that it makes sense to take children to hockey,” says the man who resurrected the Brno Kometa in an interview with Sport.cz and as the owner and coach led her to the titles. “And we also want to please people in these difficult times.”

Are you an optimist before the championship?

I am optimistic by nature. Nor did anyone believe me 18 years ago to put the Comet on its feet and make it what it is. And if no one still trusts us, it’s the motivation to prove them wrong. When I see how our players respond well to smaller systemic things, how we pay attention to them thanks to a detailist like Kari, I have to be optimistic.

You say that Czech hockey needs success because of its children. Is this the key to recruitment?

We were hit by the covid period, when children could not play sports, go to school. They learned through computers, which reinforced my impression that we urgently needed success to get the boys back on hockey. After all, such a product could not train for almost two years. We need to motivate parents, for whom it has also been a socially and economically challenging period, to bring the children back. The strongest recruits were after Nagano, the titles of world champions and in our Comet after our titles in 2017 and 2018. Medal success, and when the youth teams start to defeat Finland and Sweden regularly, can help a lot.

After joining Kometa, you coached the children yourself, led a group around your son, which included Lukáš Dostál, Filip Král and later Martin Nečas. How to ignite a love of sports in children?

For the second or third grade, a skating game exercise should be devised. At the same time fun for kids to look forward to training. From the fifth grade onwards, you pay attention to the results, not in the matches, but as the player improves in skating, you have to pay attention to his development. If a child brings you four from school, you won’t tell him: It doesn’t matter, mainly play there! And we may have inadvertently chosen this way to “come and play.” We don’t have the results, so we made a mistake with the set system about 14 years ago, you can never work without mistakes, but it was a bad decision. Many of them are about the approach of the parents and then the coach, who has to take the child as a teacher.

But there are not many good coaches, they often come across ambitious parents.

Hockey as a team sport is also about how a child behaves in the team, how he behaves in it. And the importance of the coach is enormous. As a coach, I had the huge advantage that I set my parents not to talk to me in hockey. I said to the boys: Now you have come to the locker room and you are mine. When you go out, you’re parents again. At Kometa, we had to teach the children to greet in the first place. They didn’t, but if you’re going to spend an hour and a half with your child, you have to be an educational hockey teacher. But what we can’t do is that when a child comes to the winter to teach him a somersault and a handstand.

Photo: Michal Kamaryt, CTK

Training of the Czech national hockey team before the start of the World Cup in Tampere.Photo: Michal Kamaryt, CTK

He has to know that from school. It is difficult for you to work with a little boy who will not do a somersault. You only have an hour when you have to teach him basic hockey skills. Physical training is a problem that is not just about hockey. A way must be found to reconnect sport and school. We used to have an ice lesson during the gym and there was no need for any training in the afternoon. And he also had a quality gym. If we didn’t climb the rope three times in the fifth grade without a hitch, it was a maze. And I doubt that children can do it today. But school forced us to do that.

But physical education is the first thing that cancels out at school. Many children do not exercise. Shouldn’t sports associations unite and put pressure on the Ministry of Education?

Rather, we must openly admit that our sports infrastructure is terribly neglected. Ice rinks are being built by private entities, but the state must take care of the sports grounds and the motivation to lead children to sport. We don’t want overweight children. But only a tiny fraction of the state budget has been invested in infrastructure. We are making a huge effort to make a multifunctional arena in Brno. We have been working on that dream since August 2015 and take what time has passed. It’s been a long time. Sports fields for children do not have to be so expensive, but even so – now that energy is becoming more expensive – it will not be possible to finance without the state. If you now have to calculate a real hour for renting ice, then youth and amateur clubs are unable to pay.

You talked about the education system in Finland …

… but it’s the same in Sweden or Switzerland. That they pump tactical things into children long before we were told. Even in Czech hockey, I hear why we hired Kari, but I think we need a change. We have to admit the truth in some things. There is no shame in looking elsewhere. A few years ago I took a junior, youth coaches and we went to the two best academies in Sweden. We watched all the trainings, filmed them, played matches. The children’s training was no different, but somewhere around their fifteenth year it will change and they are better. Maybe it’s a mentality. In Linköping, even though it was snowing, the boys rode their bikes for training. Our parents drive them with us. Our nation has great advantages in creativity, we are not machine, we can read the game. We have players who have a great selection of seats, but in order to sell it, we have to get system stuff into them.

But who will make the decision to start doing it differently?

I was on the executive committee for six years. When Tomáš Král approached me, I told him that I had clear, forceful opinions and I was not very used to making compromises if I was convinced of the truth. And he said hockey needed people like that. Some meetings were vigorous and different from my colleagues. I always asked them: And how much did you train with the children? Now is a turbulent time in the hockey movement and I think it is also a targeted chaos, which results in new presidential elections. When Kari asked me if I would accept the position of assistant, I ended up as the union’s vice president, because that would be a clear conflict of interest and socially wrong. Because I commanded as I imagined it would not.

So this will be the new president?

Yes, he should start with this. I want the connection of eighteen and twenties and twenties with aces to work. We must have the same system. And if it works elsewhere, I see no reason not to take it. The 20 ends the World Cup in January, the 18 doesn’t have a championship until April, so why shouldn’t we help each other? Why don’t we use the coaches of the twenties in the EHT tournaments and they were then in the implementation team at the World Championships. Hockey is so fast today that we have three video coaches and 15 years ago it never occurred to me that it was necessary. We have a shortage of coaches, so we have to raise them for the national team.

Because, for example, none of the Czech coaches rushed to the national team this year.

Yes. We didn’t start getting those coaches back ten years. It’s not just an A, the search at the age of twenty was just as difficult. The system I am talking about is not my idea, it works in other countries and I do not see a single reason not to learn from it. And it makes a lot of sense to me. From the age of six, the coach should go upstairs and the top should be once to get to the ac. But we need to calm the hockey movement. Whoever is the new president, to go with a clear vision and convince the clubs. He can’t call a few clubs and think that’s enough. He must have a clear idea. The sports part can be changed easily, it is a question of voting by the executive committee, then it is important to get the right people for those changes.

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