Working from a new page
It’s turning out to be a unique off-season for Margot Page.
The coach of the Brock Badgers women’s hockey team, like all coaches in all sports, is flying by the seat of her pants as she and her staff deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everything is kind of at a standstill. You can do anything remotely but you can’t go to places and recruit or go to showcases or go visit athletes,” she said from her farm in Stevensville. “It’s video conferencing, or good old phone calls or text messaging.”
Fortunately, the Badgers have done the bulk of their heavy lifting as far as recruiting goes.
“Lucky for us, our recruiting, we’re pretty good for the fall and even for 20-21, but you want to see how kids are progressing too,” she said. “We have our full complement already. It’s just a matter of if anyone decides not to come back or gets injured then we would have tryouts.”
Margot Page
With her roster pretty much set, Page and her assistants are working on unique ways to monitor the players and keep them engaged.
“Everybody is in the same boat but we’re technically in the off-season,” she said. “Kids are finishing up exams so we did all of our post-season individual meetings by video where my two assistants coaches would jump on and one of the athletes would call in and we would go through everything with them. That was different but we could at least do it.”
With exams wrapping up this week, players will go right into off-season training as best they can.
“They have been training with the Brock Sports Performance (BSP) staff and doing their normal team workouts they would be doing in the off-season anyhow because we have kids all over the place,” she said. “We’re doing once-a-week video workouts with our trainer where everybody gets on video and I can see everybody working out on their little screens.”
Page is also working on different drills for her players, bearing in mind ice is unavailable at the moment.
“I’m co-ordinating some off-ice shooting drills, puck handling drills, skating efficiency things they can do,” she said. “I’m creating that so they can add that into their day as well.”
Page has also encouraged the players to remain active academically.
“You don’t want to completely pack them but we’re also recommending to do an on-line course. Why not? Keep yourself engaged. Keep structure. Stay positive,” she said.
Page believes it is vital to keep in contact with the team.
“We connect with them all the time. We’re going to be doing team meetings and leadership videos. You have to be creative. You’re trying to be creative to stay connected with them. That’s the biggest thing.”
Page admits to missing her players.
“The biggest thing is everything happened so fast at the end of the season the kids just left and you didn’t have time to hug them and say goodbye and have a good face-to-face with them. That’s the really hard part. We miss them so much.”
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