You can also listen to the interview in the audio version.
The national team has nine players in its squad who have worn the jersey of the Brno hockey team, three of them already played for it in the youth teams.
At the same time, the South Moravian club was almost a write-off 20 years ago and was teetering on the edge of the second and third highest leagues. With the new management led by the owner Libor Zábranský, however, he gradually recovered. You can also see it when working with talents.
WC in hockey 2024
Youth hockey players in Brno have special cards that they present at school. They hone their skills under the supervision of a wide network of specialized trainers. And when the blue-and-white junior fought in the extra-league final with Třinec this year, four thousand people went to the matches.
“We are building on the things that the management set from the beginning. Clubism, hard work and group in individual teams. We cultivate teamwork and love for sports in the boys,” says youth hockey coach Jan Konečný.
He has been working at Kometa for about 15 years, and he remembers well how defender Libor Hájek, who made his extraleague debut in A at the age of 16, and goalkeepers Lukáš Dostál and Karel Vejmelka, who successfully adapted to the extraleague with Kometa and then went overseas, grew up there.
At the same time, Konečný has a position as a lecturer at the Faculty of Sports Studies of Masaryk University, and in Kometa he acts as a link between the club and the schools of growing hockey players.
If I also include defender Michal Kempný, who only joined the club as a junior, four players of the current national team have started successful professional careers in Brno. You’ve experienced them all on the ice. What did they deviate from?
I didn’t train Kempné, I was like a coach or assistant for the others. Humility and a great degree of intensity in training apply to all of them, as well as undoubtedly a degree of talent. They did not like to lose and had healthy competition among themselves. If someone wants to achieve success, he must have a quality implementation team around him. And we can’t forget the parents either. Apart from Kempas (Kempný), I know all the parents personally. I dealt with them many times, they knew what they wanted. We were on the same page.
Goalkeepers Dostál and Vejmelka are already collecting dozens of starts in the NHL. What would you do in a club job with goalkeepers?
It’s in the training settings. Previously, the coach trained the entire team. Today you have a coach, trainer, skill trainer, goalkeeper trainer. This also makes the club’s quality facilities. Goalkeepers have special training in the preparation period, sometimes they are with the team, sometimes they have separate exercises. We have other goalkeeper hopes, Honza Kavan and our former player Míša Schnattinger are in the national team.
We mentioned four current representatives. Do you have any specific memories of them?
I remember when Michal Kempný was already playing in the A team and came to junior training. We did a station, very focused on individual skating. When I saw the intensity with which he did the exercises, it was another level. We just watched. He also made it to such a career.
Lukáš Dostál collected medals in youth teams. He could act like a brat, but he was a humble, terribly decent boy. The match doesn’t work out, you start over the next day. Since then, he has been chasing a dream that is now coming true. In the set philosophy of the club and his great humility and hard work, he worked his way up among the goalkeeping elite.
Libor Hájek came in the seventh and eighth grade. He was already moved, a category higher than the others. In that case, the boy has to play prim, first second line. And when the boys want to improve themselves, as a coach you prefer to go to the winter in the morning. You enjoy watching each other watch how many push-ups they did.
I did not train him, but I saw him work and led him in the program of supporting talented athletes at the Faculty of Sports Studies of Masaryk University, which he studied and successfully completed his master’s degree.
Comet was still in 2004 with an exaggeration to close. How did work with youth gradually start?
The owner, Libor Zábranský, has built an organization that works and has surrounded himself with a team that tries to make every effort from the very beginning for the development of the players and the running of the club. It was an increase in training activities, an improvement in the quality of training. We try to keep improving, we participate in training and seminars at the hockey association. We pass information between colleagues. The boys gradually achieved success. Parents are an important part of success. The players who succeeded had them on their side, so to speak, also in terms of communication and fairness.
What does a normal training regimen look like for teenagers and juniors?
They have two and three times a week two-phase training, weekend matches. They come in the morning, start with a joint warm-up, then go on the ice. In the afternoon too. Times vary, depending on ice availability. In the Czech Republic, we do not have nearly as many ice surfaces when we want to compare ourselves to Finland or Sweden. When you are there on an internship, you see that a player can go there on the ice all alone or in a small group. We don’t have these possibilities, so we have to use every moment and try to adjust the methodology in a targeted way. Training determines the period: preparation, pre-race, competition. This also includes video analysis and preparation for opponents. Further from the youth and juniors, it is mainly about skating, team organization in attack, defense, tactics and also about the fitness aspect.
At Kometa, you also work as a school coordinator. What does it involve?
I take care of the communication between the club, the player and the school. It mainly concerns ninth graders, teenagers, juniors. I talk to teachers, school principals. We send weekly plans, training programs to the school. The classmate then knows that the boy has training at such a time and does not, for example, go to school. We discuss together what they are not good at at school, what they can improve on. We have a player card system set up.
It used to be discussed at various symposia that if a boy doesn’t do well in school, he can’t play. One unnamed coach stepped forward and said: I can’t start the game because half of the players have a bad grade. This is also why we have introduced player cards that each ward receives. It’s like a student book. Every month I get feedback as a coach. A student writes to me, a class teacher writes to me. It leads to better communication, to saying things to each other. It certainly helps. Each hockey academy has it set up a little differently.
Cooperation with parents
When discussing the state of Czech hockey, the role of parents is often mentioned. From your experience, what works for them?
I would split it. Some of the parents succeeded in some sport or were actively involved in it. Some have never played sports and they are, for example, successful managers, company directors. They need more advice, more communication, how their child should improve. How many times do they get carried away, take the child outside of our training program to another environment, perhaps for some individual training. But sometimes the boys don’t know anything about it. A big problem is parents’ lack of information. They send the child to camp, where sometimes they focus on something that is not needed at the moment. It can still harm the boy. Parents sometimes eat their vision. Some children show that they are forced. No one asks them if they like the sport.
And how important is it to combine school with hockey?
I will tell you one example. It happened to me as a teenager that a parent came, his son had a problem at school. My father and I agreed beforehand. He arrived at the cabin, in front of everyone he packed his son’s bag that he would not play. The boy cried, they were playing in the playoffs then. It was enlightenment for others, this is education. It is necessary to establish order, discipline.
There are around 30,000 active hockey players in the Czech Republic. How is it with the interest in this sport in the youth categories?
Of course, we organize recruitments, hockey weekends. We have an average of 20-22 players in individual student categories. The biggest boom and interest always comes with success. When you win a title, the city, the parents, the kids live by it. And it also applies to success at the World Cup. It is necessary to lead children to education, but also to sports.
In this regard, physical education in schools is a much-discussed issue. Each principal has so-called available hours in the school (they can be used for the specific needs of children – editor’s note), which can be divided. It is thus possible to introduce several exercises per day. If the hockey classes were restored, the students are able to improve more quickly in general physical training such as gymnastics, basketball, athletics. I see a huge problem with this. Movement activity decreases.
At the same time, children have a huge choice of many interest groups.
Compared to history, there are many more possibilities. But as it has already been mentioned many times in the media, in the past children went to play football, basketball, tennis after school. Now parents usually take their children to the winter. There is minimal physical activity outside of training. We need to involve a more versatile preparation. It happens that in the sixth grade you get a boy who can’t roll, can’t jump properly. Then it’s really hard to make him a hockey player. Before, children already went skating with elementary school, now sometimes even teachers have a problem with it.
For example, in Norway, where up to 93 percent of children play sports, children up to the age of 12 often do not play for goals or points at all. Is this the right path for you?
We should follow our path that we have made for ourselves. Not quite children, but in the seventh, eighth, ninth grades we should play competitive matches with equally skilled opponents. It is about setting up the system in hockey association competitions. Teams like Brno, Zlín, Vítkovice, Třinec are competitive, children develop through tough matches. Kids from smaller clubs should also be in contact with the bigger ones, but of course it doesn’t help if they get 20 goals somewhere. It is a big problem. However, I think the setup is getting better. In smaller cities, cooperation between clubs could deepen. The joy of the sporting experience should always prevail.
From the first of January, the system of hockey academies, which are divided according to the participation of youth teams in competitions, has changed. Kometa is together with 14 other clubs in the AAA category. Do you think this is a good change?
Time will tell. It is important that the cascade works as well as the long-term programs. Knowledge in hockey is still evolving and there is a need to educate yourself. Academies were created to connect with the school. We have already addressed that there is room for improvement. However, these organizations are beneficial in that they are an incentive for players from smaller clubs to join them.
We experienced lean years in youth hockey, the Czechs were not seen much in the NHL draft. In the last two years, however, the national team won medals at the U20 World Cup, and the younger ones are doing well too. Is this a sign of longer-term improvement?
I think that the coaches across the clubs are trying to do their job above standard. The medals show us that we are going in the right direction. The work shows. It’s not that bad, quite the opposite.
