Roman Vlach | Photo: Markéta Křížová
Long-time extra-league forward Roman Vlach hung up his skates after last season, ending his active career at the age of 34. However, he remains with hockey: Vsetín announced him as a reinforcement of the coaching staffs of the youth teams.
It is a somewhat symbolic reinforcement. Rostislav Vlach returned to Vsetín a year ago and took over the local junior team. He did excellently with her, but in the end the Wallachians were once again missing a single step to advance to the extra league. In the final of the second highest competition, they lost to the sovereign Slavia.
Now the local hockey players will also meet the son of an experienced coach at Lapača.
Roman Vlach
attacker, 34 years old
” href=” Vlach will start at the club as an assistant in the second and third grades under head coach Libor Forch.
The career of the former youth representative is not nearly as closely linked with Vsetín as it is in the case of his father. But the younger Vlach also has the local environment fresh in his mind, he came to Vsetín in the 2019/20 season and worked there for the following two complete seasons.
He spent the next year in Prostějov, then divided the past season between Zlín, Přerov and Prostějov, where he also played the last match of his career – symbolically in the quarter-final series against his parent team, the Rams.
It was in their jersey that he made his way to the extra league, where he also played in Liberec, Karlovy Vary, Olomouc, Trinec, Pilsen and Pardubice. To his misfortune, he “jumped” from Zlín, among other things, for the championship season 2013/14. He played a respectable 637 matches among the Czech elite before his thirtieth birthday, in which he scored 116 goals and set up 127 of them.
As in his playing career, he will now be able to draw on his father’s experience in his coaching career as well. He remains at the helm of the Vsetín junior team with assistant Radim Kucharczyk, but the Wallachians have made changes in a pair of younger categories.
Jan Dědek is moving to head youth coach Miroslav Barus from the age of nine; even the second oldest category definitely wants to fight for a return to the elite. Only the ninth grade of the Valachs, which will be led by Zbyněk Žabčík – as well as the sports section of the academy – is currently active in it. Ondřej Němec, the 2010 world champion, remains the assistant to the nine.
Jan Podešva, Lubomír Konečný, Marek Lukáš, Daniel Tesařík and the aforementioned Forch, who reached the finals of the Thanks, coach event, will be in charge of the younger category of Vsetín youth in the new year.
Miroslav Barus on the changing table of the Vsetín youth team | Photo: Helena Hegeďová
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