CT Hockey News asked to hear about the good things going on with member program activities around the state and how they are working to Grow CT Hockey. We received a great story from Steve Curran relating to the GTG initiative that the Greater New Haven Warriors (GNHW) are hosting and developing via the First Strides pilot program.
The First Strides concept was created by Nike Bauer to provide kids with no prior hockey or skating experience the opportunity to try the game in a fun environment at no cost. GNHW is responsible for developing it administratively, logistically and operationally. The program began on September 2nd and ran through September 18th. Two 60 minute sessions a week were provided on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:00pm and 1:30pm respectively for three weeks totaling six sessions. The concept is based on utilizing unused ice time during the week (and its associated lower costs) and targeting younger kids who may have other activities or family obligations on weekends.
Nike Bauer has underwritten the cost of the ice time and has supplied helmets with face masks, gloves, sticks, skates and jerseys. All the equipment is on loan to the players (GNHW stores it between sessions) with the exception of the jerseys, which the kids get to keep. GNHW provide all the logistics and coordination. i.e. registration, equipment fitting, securing the ice, publicity, etc., as well as the instructors. GNHW is also developing the on-ice curriculum. Once the program is completed, GNHW will conduct a post-mortem and refine the concept.
The initial sign-up was strong with 23 kids, 17 of which had never been on skates before (or been in a rink for that matter). The remaining six had been on skates at least once, but none had played hockey and only one parent had another child who had played hockey before. So GNHW hit its target audience perfectly. All of the kids are between the ages of 3-5 years old. There is no doubt that we could have potentially doubled the number of participants had we worked through the area schools AM kindergarten programs, but in light of the fact that this is a pilot program, GNHW felt that they needed to cap the number of participants in order to preserve an effective coach/participant ratio.
The real indication of whether this program is successful is how many of the kids continue on in the other programs that GNHW offers such as Learn-To-Skate and Clinic. They have already had some initial inquiries.
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