Coaching education program for United Arab Emirates ice hockey association : building the framework and level 1 material

The purpose of building a coaching education program for UAE Ice Hockey was to create and assure a continuum for coaching quality in UAE Ice Hockey. The idea was to build a structured program with easily understandable material that would bring out practically competency assistant coaches/instructors to Abu Dhabi Ice Hockey School juniors. Abu Dhabi Ice Hockey school is a new organization located in Abu Dhabi. With only one rink and restricted ice time the key issue is to provide planned practices with qual-ity coaching for the players. The idea of thiscoaching program is to produce practically capable coaches for youngest junior groups. Level 1 of the program is targeted for new-inexperienced coaches and old local Emirati players and its´ goal is to prepare them to coach the youngest groups atthe school. Program is based on specific key learning objectives. These learning objectives are the base of the whole education program and they have been defined according to the cur-rent needs of ice hockey development in UAE. The teaching material is built around these learning objectives and the effectiveness of the program will be tested through them. This manual will go through basic concepts of coaching junior players in ice hockey and human development process in childhood as well as basic leadership and commu-nication principles. The project started in December 2009 and is ongoing until 2011 May. The idea of this project is to be the basis for a more stable development of the quality in coaching and player development in UAE ice hockey