Why Should Our Association Get Ringette Goalie Training?

So often, the Ringette goalie gets ignored or forgotten during a practice, only to have the entire focus be on them and their performance during a game. A good goalie can carry your team through many situations, but why do some teams and associations seem to forget that Ringette goalies need specialized training as well for their position?

If this is something that your goalie, team or association is questioning, here are some comments I recently emailed back to a young lady wanting to help make the case why her association should look into including Ringette goalie training in their budget for the year:

- I think being a Ringette goalie is such a specific and precise position where a slight change in weight or little tweak to a goalie's technique can make all the difference between a save and a goal - especially when Ringette players have such amazing control of the ring and can shoot so well from such a young age with these nice sticks

- Ringette goalies often get left behind in developement as coaches either don't have formal goalie training so focus more on the players' development, or the coaches have more of a hockey goalie background and might be missing the fine differences between skills a goalie needs for Ringette vs hockey

- We think it's very important to start developing Ringette goalies at a young age because the shooters can raise the ring and do a lot with the ring from a young age. If you want your Ringette goalies to be set up for success, they also need to learn skills to help them succeed at a young age against these shooters so that they aren't discouraged and want to continue to play goal. It's also important to not ignore the older goalies since there are still skills and techniques they can learn specific to Ringette goalies to improve their game and become more integrated into their team defence overall

- Also, Ringette goalies are hard to find - we aren't beating them off with a stick - most teams are lucky to find 1 goalie, much less have actual tryouts for 1 or 2 spots on the team - this makes it worth an association's time to invest from an early stage in recruiting, training and encouraging ringette goalies to keep the position and keep coming back

- When we train Ringette goalies with 5-Count, we're able to offer experienced Ringette goalie instructors who know how our game of Ringette is played, know where the shots are coming from, and know what techniques Ringette goalies need to learn and perfect in order to best succeed in our game. We also give not only the association's Ringette goalies, but also their teams, coaches and the Associations themselves role models that
their goalies, coaches and parents can ask questions of, interact with and want to learn from.