Text | Wu Ke
Figure | Respondents provided
The Beijing Winter Olympics set off a wave of Chinese people's attention to ice and snow sports. Shanghai, although it is a city in East China where the next snow can be searched, there are more and more families with skis on their backs, flying to Chongli, Beidahu, Hokkaido, experiencing the fun of skiing, and jokingly calling it "white opium". But globally, ice hockey is the "crown" of winter sports. At the Black Dragon Ice and Snow Club in Songjiang University Town, Jingkids Shanghai met a group of children practicing ice hockey.
Get closer to the kids who play hockey
01
Li Tianyu, a fourth-grader, and Yuan Chenxuan, a third-grader, both attend Jianxiang Primary School in Xuhui District. "Fast and exciting!" When it comes to ice hockey, their faces are filled with the same excitement, although Yuan Chenxuan's love for ice hockey has one more reason than Li Tianyu - "The equipment is very handsome!" "They also have one thing in common, that is, they went from learning roller skating to learning roller skating, and then to ice hockey. This is also a phenomenon peculiar to Shanghai, a city where temperatures rarely reach freezing points.
The International Skating Hall in Matsue University Town
It is the "only two" in Shanghai that can be stable for a long time on weekends
One of the venues where the competition is held
In northern cities that never lack snow cover, children usually learn to skate while watching the older children play ice hockey, while following the adults to watch various leagues, and then fall in love with ice hockey, and then play ice hockey. Although the path to ice hockey is different, but the love is not divided into north and south - Yuan Chenxuan can't find friends in the class who can talk about ice hockey, Li Tianyu has a slight concussion, but in the hearts of the two boys, these are not the same thing at all, and their biggest hope is the club game every Sunday - "It's so challenging!" ”
There is a student on the team who has tried soccer, basketball, swimming, tennis extensively before playing ice hockey, and has also trained seriously with high-level coaches in fencing, but after encountering ice hockey, all of these sports have been eclipsed. For the kind of children who love strong confrontation and like the strong stimulation of speed, such an outcome is almost inevitable. The fast pace and physical exertion of ice hockey require extremely strong judgment and rapid reaction, which test the coordination of hand-eye combination, hand-foot combination, and flexible mind to think about the situation on the field. For capable participants, the greater the difficulty, the more fun it will be.
There will be a certain degree of collision in the ice hockey game, which is very worrying for most parents, but for many young players, there is really no better thing than hitting people! Team projects are also more interesting than individual projects, "Sometimes when the other side scores several goals in a row, everyone is frustrated and even complains to each other." But we will remind ourselves to be calm, because there is still a game to come. When the game was over, everyone had forgotten all the chagrin they had just had. ”
Children's interests are often the opposite of those of a certain type of parent who is pragmatic at all times. That type of parent often wants their children to engage in safer sports, such as badminton and tennis against the net; more personal projects, so that the determination of the results is stronger; if it is the kind of project that can clearly identify the results, it is better, such as swimming that can clearly record the time or taekwondo, which can use belts to color mark the level. In a way, such a perspective cannot be said to be completely wrong.
During the National Day Beijing Exchange Competition, three female team members
(No. 16 Ye Shuxin, No. 11 Cheng Jingyi, No. 22 Zhou Erdong)
Forming a forward, Ye Shuxin broke through with the ball
Andy is a third-year student in the middle school and international, and his teenage brother is already a fake bully in american universities. My brother once solemnly said to his mother, "Let my brother practice sports more," which was one of the most important conclusions he came to in his study and life in the United States.
In fact, even without the reminder of the eldest son, the mother attaches great importance to the sports of the younger son, because she herself has worked in the software industry in the United States. "Compared to Indians, Chinese too lack team spirit." This sentence sounds a bit clichéd, but the mother has a more in-depth explanation: Chinese have a collectivist spirit, that is, to take their share of the task when a superior-designated authority clearly divides the responsibilities, and then try to complete it. But for the sake of the team's common goals, sharing ideas, generating paths, and adjusting personal interests is lacking. To make up for this shortcoming, a team sport such as ice hockey is a good carrier.
Chen Haocheng, the 13-year captain of the Black Dragon Falcon Team, whose parents were born and raised in the northeast, have a natural affinity for ice and snow, recalling that when he was a child, "the school playground will be poured with ice in winter, and a few dollars to rent an ice knife and a snowboard can enjoy the fun of ice and snow."
Influenced by his parents, Chen Haocheng began skiing at the age of three and began to play ice hockey at the age of four and a half. Like many children, he loves to play, talking about the three-on-three half game he will go to Beijing in April, but he is a little nervous about running a big lap to practice physical fitness, and the star he admires is Tampa Bay Lightning defender Victor Herdman, also because he is "a good brain, calculating the passing route quickly". Although there is a tendency to "physically insufficient intelligence", he also gradually realized that daily training is indeed boring, but to win the game, it must rely on ice accumulation, with excellent physical strength and technical support.
How high is the threshold of the ice hockey ball to the bottom
02
Most of the team members interviewed by Jingkids this time are around 10 years old, from the Shanghai Black Dragon Falcon Team. Because the rules of the ice hockey game emphasize age groups, U6 builds teams, and U8, U10 and U12 produce results, which is the general rule. Coach Guo Dachuan told us that children can generally start enlightenment between the ages of 3 and 4, and it is usually recommended to start serious training before the age of 6, and it is not recommended to start after the age of 8 under the premise of scientific training methods and adequate training.
Guo Dachuan is an athlete who grew up in the system, was the captain of the Chinese Dragon Team of the Asian Ice Hockey League, became a coach after retiring, brought out a number of championship teams, and sent 5 players into the top AAA team of the Canadian Youth Hockey League GTHL in 5 years.
Beijing Exchange Competition during the 11th National Day
Shanghai Falcons ice hockey team U8 combination photo
For professional ice hockey training for teenagers, the professional advice is to keep it at least three times a week and above, each time for one and a half hours. The Black Dragon Ice Club usually organizes the corresponding friendly matches when the player is 6 years old, because the game is the best way to transform the results of training, and the rhythm felt in the game is irreplaceable by training. The competition around the age of 6 is mainly based on experience and tempering, this process will last from half a year to a year, and from the age of 7 to 8, there will be a corresponding U8 level official competition.
When facing an official match, the team usually chooses group training, and depending on the game, the cycle of training is common from one day to one week or even a month. Ice hockey has high requirements on the field, so the number of courts is not much, generally located in the suburbs, the children interviewed usually take 80 to 120 minutes to get to and from the stadium, write homework between classes, after school by parents to drive over to train, dinner is eaten in the car, some reading and recitation of homework is also completed on the car, which is the norm for hockey players. In addition, it takes an additional 15 to 20 minutes to put on and take off the gear. This is an investment in time.
Then there's the money investment. Course fees, equipment and competitions are not small expenses. If it is only as an investment of interest, the training cost of young players of the Black Dragon Ice and Snow Club is about 30,000 to 60,000 yuan a year, and there is obviously another account for families with high standards and strict requirements. Helmets, jerseys, protective gear, ice knives, a set down to tens of thousands of yuan, in the primary school stage of children are the time to grow tall, so a year or two to replace. Clubs are consumables, around 2,000 yuan of clubs, and it is common for children who play more to change 8 to 10 sticks a year.
Going out to participate in the competition to consider transportation, accommodation, team members of the family also have to share the ice time fee of the other side's home, so calculated, it costs more than 100,000 yuan per year, if you want to go abroad to compete, or go to Beijing or even overseas to ask for guidance from famous teachers, it is not uncommon for families to spend millions of dollars a year.
In 1963, the Chinese men's national ice hockey team was established, and in 1986 and 1990, it won the gold medal in the men's ice hockey competition of the Asian Winter Games. It can be said that the sport of ice hockey is not a new face in China. But the high investment in time and money may be doomed to be a niche sport in China for some time to come.
Subject to the constraints of venue conditions, the training of young athletes in ice hockey has developed less in southern cities, and the selection and training system of athletes is also limited to the selection of municipal teams and provincial teams in the early system; with the gradual improvement of the average GDP of Chinese, the ice rink is no longer limited to the natural ice in the north, nor is it limited to the higher temperature in the south, and the sport of ice hockey has gradually begun to expand to more economically developed areas, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
It can be said that in the past ten years, in the case of the gradual increase of infrastructure facilities, the training system outside the system has begun to appear. Thanks to the favorable timing and location of hosting the Winter Olympics, Beijing has formed a city-centered industrial agglomeration.
2021 China Youth Ice Hockey League (Shanghai) Award Ceremony
Shanghai Falcons Ice Hockey Team U8 Group Runner-up
Captain Chen Haocheng was awarded the "Most Valuable Player in the Game"
The high investment in ice hockey seems to limit ice hockey to high-net-worth families in developed cities. Correspondingly, parents have high demands on the level of clubs and coaches. The parents of the Black Dragon Falcon Team greatly appreciated Coach Guo Dachuan.
"I originally thought that the coach was to teach the technique, sliding, plucking, shooting, tactics, etc., training carefully is a good coach." Only after participating in it is that the coach's work is actually similar to that of a project manager, managing team members, handling disputes, communicating with parents, and directing the various personalized needs of parents to the common goals of the team. Doing all this well requires the authority of the coach, which comes from professional ability, but also from comprehensive quality and personality charm. In the process of accompanying my children's training, as a parent, I have also gained a lot of growth. Some parents said.
While parents have high requirements for coaches, parents will also have high requirements for themselves. A number of young players interviewed said that their parents are sports enthusiasts, some love multiple sports activities, some specialize in one, and have a high level. After parents send their children to, they rarely get together to chat or leave, generally watching the child's training carefully outside the field, recording the coach's action demonstration and the child's wrong movements, and going home to help the child review. Some also lead their children to practice paddling, shooting, land, and special physical training at home every day.
The combined efforts of the players, coaches and parents have created a good atmosphere for the club. The mother of Ye Shuxin, a second-grade girl in Gao'an Road, told Jingkids that the captain's father would make a video of each game and share it with everyone in order to analyze the situation of himself and his opponents; the coach would take a screenshot of the video of the game at the Winter Olympics and post it in the parent group to tell "this is the action we are learning"; the whole team is democratic and open, and everyone will discuss and solve problems together.
For operators, the difficulty of operating ice hockey is also much more difficult than other projects, international competitions are 61 meters long, 30 meters wide, the radius of the arc of the arc is 8.5 meters, there are only four standard ice rinks in Shanghai, and only two ice hockey matches can be held on weekends for a long time, and the International Skating Hall located in Songjiang University Town is one of them. Other sports can turn off the lights at the end of training, but the ice rink must be powered on 24 hours a day, which means high electricity bills. In addition, we must also bother to maintain the stability of the team and the coaching team, because the club, the coach, the team, these three are destined to be mutually successful relationships.
So why choose ice hockey?
03
Even for families who can cross these high thresholds, children may not be suitable for ice hockey. Coach Guo Dachuan told Jingkids that unlike basketball, which requires tall children and long legs in the long jump, ice hockey is not very picky about the external physical conditions of players, but the requirements for physical function are very high, and speed, endurance, and explosiveness are indispensable. Although physical function can be enhanced by diligent training, children who are born with a fear of high speeds may not be suitable for this sport. Under the layers of screening of these constraints, there are only more than 1,000 students in Shanghai.
So why do these families choose hockey?
In Beijing, the advantages of ice hockey in further education are very obvious. Previously, there were media reports that in 2019 alone, 61 primary and secondary schools in Beijing were included in the ice and snow characteristic schools, and many of them were characterized by ice hockey. For schools that value hockey, students will obviously gain favor if they perform well in municipal leagues. Parents who send their children to practice hockey are partly for this stepping stone. Not only at the beginning of the xiaosheng, some primary schools in Beijing also began to select ice hockey talents. Compared with other traditional sports specialties, the foundation of ice hockey is not deep, the competition is not so fierce, and it is a collective project, as long as the team can achieve the ranking, the players have honors.
The more ambitious goal is to "climb the vine". Using hockey expertise as a stepping stone, landing in the American Youth League or Canadian Youth League under the American College League (NCAA) system can gain an advantage when applying for high school or even college, and even receive scholarships. Compared with other projects, there are many potential competitors directly. But many parents feel that it is too vain to link playing hockey with further education.
"Whether the target school attaches importance to the hockey project, whether it will favor students with hockey expertise, a team is divided into 2 defenders, 2 forwards, 1 center, 1 goalkeeper, whether it is just missing the corresponding position, whether the child can reach such a high level, there are too many variables here. What we are looking at is the shaping of the child itself by the ice hockey project. ”
During the 2021 China Youth Ice Hockey League (Shanghai Station).
The coach sets up the game tactics
Xu Yueqi and Xu Yubo's mother also disagreed with the "ice hockey climbing vine theory", but she provided another perspective: after going overseas to study, ice hockey can better integrate into the local community. Perhaps also from this point of view, after the younger brother Xu Yubo played a stage of ice hockey, the sister Xu Yueqi also joined in and became a goalkeeper. My sister has studied many interest classes before, has already achieved great achievements in dance, and has received several advertising endorsements. "My sister plays ice hockey in the hope that through this sport, she will become more focused and brave. Now when the ball flew towards her, she was not afraid, not even blinking her eyes. ”
The father of the main striker Li Sheng admitted that when the child first learned ice hockey, it was indeed out of the consideration of study abroad planning, but after five or six years of playing the ball, I have seen all the masters, the mentality is completely different, and now the most important thing is the improvement of the sport of ice hockey on the child's willpower, teamwork, leadership and other underlying abilities.
The Black Dragon Falcons' 11-year captain, Promise Wang, is about to go to Canada to study, and his ultimate dream is to become a star player in the NHL, "so I chose a school with a strong hockey program." For Wang, the ladder to the dream is clear, and every year the ice hockey teams of the best high schools in Canada and the United States are open to selection. The NHL's top star players make nearly $15 million a year, with an average salary of $2.4 million. Although it is not as good as the annual salary of the top star players in the NBA, the annual salary is close to $40 million, the average salary is $5 million, but it is also quite impressive.
According to the authoritative financial media "Forbes" in 2018 statistics, the North American Professional Hockey League (NHL) ranks fifth in the global sports league market value ranking, and the gap with the fourth-ranked Premier League is very small. Ice hockey provides about $3 billion or $4.5 billion in domestic production in Canada and the United States each year, and is arguably a very mature and attractive industry. But if you have been staying in the country to develop, the road to becoming a professional ice hockey player is not broad, there are few ice rinks, fewer events, and at the age of 12, with the aggravation of schooling, there are fewer children who still insist on playing ice hockey, and it can almost be said that they can barely get together a team.
January 30, 2022 Annual activities before the Spring Festival
The men's team vs the women's team concluded the friendly match
The coaching staff brought wigs to the women's team to compete with the players
Chen Haocheng's mother, Liu Wei, is also an educator. As the vice principal of Soong Ching Ling School, she is very concerned about whether ice and snow projects, including ice hockey, can get the soil for growth in schools at the basic education stage. At the Winter Olympics, two of her alumni, Zhou Jiaying, who graduated from Princeton, and Su Yiming, who attended Jilin No. 1 Middle School, performed eye-catchingly.
In her view, the training of athletes in our country has also begun to pay attention to the long-term and all-round development of individuals, and there is no need to give up their studies for sports. However, for sports such as ice hockey, the construction and follow-up operation of the venue, the training of high-level coaches, and the construction of talent echelons all require greater support from the government and society, only in this way can the popularity of ice and snow projects continue to be maintained after the Winter Olympics.
Black Dragon Ice and Snow Club is optimistic about the development prospects of the industry, with Shanghai's GDP exceeding the 4 trillion mark, I believe that the customer base with consumption power will become larger and larger, and the club is also actively contacting the surrounding primary schools and kindergartens, hoping that ice hockey will enter the campus and let more children experience the charm of ice hockey.
Regardless of the industry outlook, there are two things we can be sure of:
One
The starting point of participation in ice hockey is the child's own strong interest, and all the external forces that parents can exert are nothing more than the word "support"; if it is not from the interest, such frequent and arduous training, relying on parents push alone, is an unimaginable thing;
Second
We should applaud the inclusiveness of the city of Shanghai – anything that sounds so small, it is the luck of the times to find a group of participants, enthusiasts, operators in Shanghai, which is the luck of the times and the luck of living in Shanghai.