Ringette Beginner Drill Book Download

In this online program we've given you more than just a bunch of drills. We've tried to provide "the Bible" on how to coach a U10 team, including an explanation of each skill and how to teach it. The way to get the most out of this resource is to go through each section thoroughly. This one simple act will shave tens of hours off your season and make it a huge success.

NOTE: In the very last section of this program we've provided you with two model practice plans PLUS a PDF of all the drills in this program. You can download and print them out anytime you want. 

This tutorial is geared towards coaches for U10 and under. At this stage, your main job is to instill the love of the game. In 2009, Ringette Canada introduced a thorough plan for keeping athletes involved in ringette long-term. You can read all about it here: http://ltrd.ringette.ca/athlete/

There, you will read about important things like “optimal competition structure” and appropriate “training to competition ratio” (how much you practice versus how much you play games). Some of the core concepts include:

• Athletes do not over-compete: there is a heavy emphasis on practice and unstructured play and no formal games with winners and losers
• Focus is on the process of learning about competition - not winning and losing – and on social interaction
• Coaches are encouraged to modify the rules to accommodate the needs of beginner athletes
• Athletes receive equal ice time and do not specialize

Long term athlete development can be controversial. In my experience, those who roll their eyes at the concept tend to be those who benefitted from the old school system of throwing kids into games right off the bat and tiering athletes early. That was me before I had my own kids. As my daughter starts her ringette career, I have a deep understanding of a young athlete’s desire to quit if she doesn’t experience success early and if she concludes that other kids are better than her. I know the agony a parent feels when they don’t know if their child is having fun or feeling competent.

The old school system works for a very small percentage of athletes – the handful of most talented ones. For everyone else, that system will not help them reach their full potential.

In writing this tutorial, we have therefore drawn from our over 70 years of ringette playing and coaching experience, our parenting knowledge, and our enthusiastic support of Ringette Canada’s athlete development philosophy. Long term athlete development ensures that athletes reach their potential and it improves retention.

One thing you’ll notice right away is that we often encourage you to have your athletes try a skill two different ways – the way that works and the way that doesn’t. This is called the “awareness approach” to coaching.

The awareness approach can be contrasted with the traditional teaching points method of coaching.

Using teaching points, you bring athletes into a circle and describe each part of a skill to them. For example, if you were teaching the basic stance, you might say:

Okay girls, to be a powerful skater, you have to get into your basic stance. Your head is up, your eyes are facing forward, your feet, knees, and hands are shoulder width apart. Most importantly, you are bent at the knees, not at the waist. The deeper the knee bend, the better.

You then put them into a skating drill and try to provide as much one on one feedback as possible.

• “Katie, keep your head up”.
• “MacKenzie, your knees are touching. Remember, you need to keep your knees shoulder width apart”.
• “Juliet, bend your knees. See how low you can get.”

When an athlete hears a correction, she immediately thinks she’s done something wrong.

The other night my daughter had a fantastic swim lesson where she demonstrated an unusual level of enthusiasm and effort. She really seemed to enjoy herself. After the lesson, I told her that she looked likeshe had a really good time. Her response, “Ya, and I only did one thing wrong”. I was surprised, “pardon me, honey?” “I only made one mistake – when I did my back kick, I bent my legs instead of keeping them straight”.

A happy, enthusiastic lesson where she had a big smile on her face the whole time and had a ton of fun splashing with her friend - and that was her first and only comment to me.

I really like her swim teacher and I saw the particular piece of feedback my daughter was talking about. I think it was well-delivered constructive feedback. In other words, I have no beef about how the teacher delivered it. It was just a stark reminder about how sensitive kids are to this stuff.

Now, before you get worked up that I think a kid can never hear the word “no” or get constructive feedback, just hear me out.

My lack of enthusiasm for teaching points is not primarily about how kids experience the corrections.

More importantly, teaching points don’t work all that well. You see, when you tell a kid to bend her knees, she thinks they’re already bent. How many times has an athlete earnestly said, “okay, I’ll bend my knees” only to carry on in the same basic stance?

The idea behind the awareness approach is that athletes have “aha” moments through feeling, not through thinking. When you give a teaching point, you use words to speak to a kid’s brain. When you use the awareness approach, you use experience to manipulate a kid’s muscle memory, which we have found to be much more effective.

The awareness approach means asking kids to try a skill the way that works and the way that doesn’t. For example, you would have kids do a basic stance with their knees locked, with their knees bent a tiny bit and with their knees bent a lot (like they are sitting on the toilet). You would then put them through different skating exercises in these same three positions.

Through over ten years of combined coaching experience, running over 100 ringette camps, and over seventy years of playing experience, here is the winning formula we have settled on for teaching any ringette skill.

• Provide your athletes with a vision. When you introduce a skill for the first time (and as needed for a refresher), ask your athletes to close their eyes while you walk them through a visualization. Have them picture the skill in a game context. This will keep them motivated when they practice it and help them execute it as they would want to during a game.Example for cross overs: “Close your eyes and imagine that your goalie just passed you the ring at the side of the net. A player on the other team is trying to check you. If you can race around the back to the net and accelerate up to the ringette line, you can make a perfect break-out pass to your teammate. Can you picture yourself racing away from the checker at top speed?”
• Demonstrate the skill using the awareness approach. Ideally, have two coaches demonstrate the skill in a way that highlights what makes the skill effective.Example for stopping: Have your athletes line up on the goal line. Two coaches get into their basic stance along the boards. On the whistle, the coaches race to the far boards and back. One coach stops on a dime – she is low, her head does not bob, and her stop is crisp. The other coach stops on a “loonie” – she is not very low, she bobs her head up after her stop, and the mark she leaves on the ice is long.The coach who stops on a dime ought to win the race. After the race, ask the kids what was “small” about the stop on a dime and what was “big” about the stop on a loonie.

• Put your athletes through age appropriate game scenarios where they use the awareness approach at increasing levels of complexity.Examplefor ring protection:Put your athletes through a game, a drill, and a game-like scenario where they have to keep the ring away from a teammate (we’ll give you some drills for this below). For every exercise, athletes do the first 2-3 reps either standing still or gliding. They do the remaining reps at top speed – their legs never stop moving. If any athletes (or if your whole team) forgets and reverts to coasting and leaning on their stick, have them practice both ways once again (coasting versus skating at top speed).

For each skill we cover in this drill book, we’ll lay out this formula.

Keeping your athletes’ attention

Every practice, rotate between drills and games or relays. For U7’s and U10’s, we do not recommend running two drills in a row.

Your athletes will also pay better attention and have more fun if your drills are kept short and the athletes are moving as much as possible. To do this, split your athletes up into smaller groups whenever you can. One strategy we love is to run a skating game in the neutral zone with half the group while the other coach runs a ring skills drill from the blue line in. The groups switch after 5-7 minutes.

Another benefit of splitting up your team during practice is it gives the coaches a chance to work with athletes in smaller ratios. A high coach to athlete ratio is a big part of long-term development for younger athletes.

Managing a wide range of skills

In planning every practice, consider how you will challenge your more experienced athletes and encourage your biggest beginners.

For beginners, ensure they touch the ring / get a turn / tag someone (even if it’s you) in each drill and game. They need to experience repeated success in order to improve. These athletes will need more attention, particularly in the early months of the season. Whenever possible, make a positive example of these athletes. When putting together teams for drills or games, ensure an even balance of your strongest and weakest athletes.

Use your voice to maintain energy

Be constantly vocal during practice. Use your “outside voice” to yell out compliments to athletes who are being deliberate, showing effort, having fun, and pushing their comfort zone.

Also ensure that you deliver frequent one on one feedback privately. When doing this, focus on “factual” rather than “judgmental” praise.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as the coach of U7 or U10 athletes is introducing the wrong skills – skills that are too advanced or teaching too many skills at once.

We recommend that you teach the following skills:

• Skating
• Passing
• Lead Passing
• Shooting
• Ring Protection
• Checking

Over the course of the season, you should gauge whether your team is progressing enough to be introduced to these tactical concepts:

• Zone defence
• Goalie ring distribution
• How to mark and intercept passes
• How to get open for passes
• How to play 3 v 3 offence

While each team will be different, here is a rough overview of what you might teach your U7 or U10 team, month by month. In each month, you should spend lots of time reviewing what you introduced in the previous month. We list only the things that you would introduce, month by month

September: Basic stance and grip, Forward glide, forward stride, stationary passing, ring protection, slider shot.

October: Skating agility (edges, tight turns, crossovers), lead passing, checking, backhand flip shot.

For U10 in particular, you will probably review rules and start to introduce the concept of where defenders, forwards, and centres play on the ice and what their separate roles are. For active start, you will start to play games and so you may start to talk about the basics of positional play but don’t stress if you don’t cover this in any meaningful way until early November.

November: Backwards skating, wrist shot.

By this point, you will definitely cover positional play and you may also want to introduce the basics of goalie distribution and something resembling a basic breakout pattern.

December: How to mark and get open, team offence.

January – February: Review (don’t forget about skating!)

No team will be successful unless they can skate. Think about everything you do in a ringette game and the role that skating plays in that skill:

• You can’t carry the ring out of your end if you can’t skate – you’ll be stripped of the ring by forecheckers who fist pump your lack of speed.
• You can’t score goals if you can’t skate – you’ll be easily channeled away from the slot and defenders will maintain goal side position when you try to drive the triangle.
• Thinking about getting open for the ring? Forget about it; you’re easily marked if you’re slow and can’t stop and start on a dime.
• Dreaming about game-saving sliding saves? Keep dreaming unless you know how to be agile and balanced in your crease.

You get my point. I could go on and on, listing every single skill in the game. It all starts with your speed, power, and balance on your skates. Improve your skating and you improve every part of your game.

This is never more true than at the U7 and U10 levels. Teams that don’t practice their skating enough will literally struggle to touch the ring come game time. You might be the league’s best passers or shooters but you simply won’t be in the game if you can’t keep up.

The biggest favour you can do your athletes is to devote enough time to skating this season. We strongly recommend that you spend 60-75% of your practice time on skating for the first two months of the season and 50% of your time on skating for the remainder of the year. This is true for U7 through U10.

Of course, while skating is the most important skill in ringette, it’s the toughest to teach, because most athletes don’t think it’s fun.

What has worked for us is taking the position that ringette is above all a sport of finesse & speed. Being a good skater is the best physical asset a ringette player can have. In other words:

To become a slightly better skater is to become a significantly better ringette player. If you can buy into this, you should be able to teach skating with an enthusiasm that is contagious.

The other trick, of course, is to “disguise” skating. Below, we give you all kinds of games and relays that will have your kids working on their skating without even knowing it.

To help your athletes absolutely master their skating, we strongly recommend you get yourself a copy of our skating product: http://www.ringettetips.com/dvdsbooks/

Stick grip

A proper grip is simple yet often overlooked. A common mistake ringette players make is holding their hands too close together on their stick:

A stick grip that is “too close” will result in a weak shot, (the athlete being in a more upright position), and a lack of accuracy and control.

Another common error that ringette players make is holding their hands too far apart:

The misconception is that this type of grip will give the athlete more power because they feel they can lean into it more. But, a stick grip that is “too far” apart will result in a lack of balance, inability to transfer your weight, and lack of accuracy and control. Also, if a player’s hands are too far apart, she might be called on a bottom third violation.

Another classic mistake is cupping the stick with your top hand, like this:

A stick grip that is “just right” will result in a strong, accurate and controlled shot.

To teach the proper grip, demonstrate a grip that is too close, too far, and just right. Have your athletes try all three while standing stationary. Next, put them into a basic partner passing drill and practice all three ways. When they’re done, discuss with them which grip felt most comfortable. Return to these two exercises as often as needed until your athletes are consistently using balanced and strong grips.

Stick Length

The rule of thumb is that a player’s ringette stick should be roughly to the bottom of her armpit when she’s standing on her skates.

This is the starting point. Some players prefer a longer stick because it increases shooting power. The downside, though, is that you might be easier to check with a long stick. For that reason, some players try a shorter stick so they can sneak into the triangle (or get away from feisty forecheckers when carrying the ring out of their end).

If you want to test out different stick lengths, here’s a revolutionary tip - try longer first because you can always make your stick shorter but you can’t make it longer once it’s cut!

Basic stance

When you first introduce the basic stance, you could provide the following vision to your athletes:

Imagine a speedy girl on the other team is skating towards our net. She winds up to take a big shot on net. Can you get into a low and powerful position and block her shot? Maybe even check her?

Because the basic stance is at the heart of every single skill, you might even consider showing your athletes a picture or two for inspiration. Feel free to print off this one or any others that you like from our products:

The awareness approach for the basic stance is:

• Are you bent at the waist (in the flower position)?
• Are you bent at the knees but only a little bit (the mess position)?
• Are you bent at the knees like you mean it(the toilet position)?

The flower position is so named because you’re bent over like you’re smelling some roses. Provide your athletes with this visual and ask them to try it. The coaches might even skate by each athlete, holding out an imaginary bouquet and asking the girls to take a deep whiff. Get them to close their eyes and notice what it feels like when they are bending at the waist and leaning forward. You might ask them, for example, what their toes are doing. Are they scrunched? Can they feel themselves leeeeaning way onto the tips of their toes?

For beginners, save the “mess” position until near the end of the season. Introducing all three positions right away will be information overload.

Next, introduce the toilet position. Ask the girls to start standing straight up. Now, slowly but surely, lower their bums like they are going to sit on a chair (or a toilet… that will usually delight their imagination all the more).

In this position, they should notice that the pressure is more on their heels than on their tippy toes. In fact, one of the sure ways to check that you’re in the toilet position is to confirm that you can freely wiggle your toes.

This clip shows an athlete moving from the toilet position to the flower position. Have your athletes do the same thing several times until they really feel the difference between the two.

With beginners, you’ll have to review more than their bent knees. Make sure all parts of your athletes’ bodies are in an effective position. The other awareness exercises are:

Are your athletes’ heads up, looking at the play, or down, looking at the ice?

Are their knees close together / touching or can your athletes get at least one glove width between their knees?

For each of these parts of the powerful stance, have your athletes try it both ways. So, for example, while your athletes are standing in the toilet position, tell them to hold it for 10 seconds with their knees touching then ask them to hold it for 10 seconds while they pass their glove between their knees.

Eventually, have them glide with their knees touching, then have them do it while swinging a glove through their knees to ensure there is enough space between them:

For head up, you could ask them to get into the toilet position and yell out how many fingers you are holding up.

If you really want to make your point, put them into a partner passing drill and ask them to do it looking at the ice and then looking at their target – they should get the point!

There is a small minority of players who cannot really bend into the toilet position because their skates do not fit properly, and they do not have enough flexibility in their skates to manage the toilet position.

There are usually two fixes to this problem: 1) getting the player’s blade re-aligned on their skate, and 2) having the athlete tie her skates differently (skip the third hole when tying the skates). If you suspect this is happening to your players most skate stores will do a free skate fit analysis for you.

Make it burn:Hold the toilet position until your legs burn. When your athletes’ legs get tired they will start to stand up a little. Have your athletes do this exercise with their eyes closed and pay very close attention to how their body changes when their legs start to get tired.

Now, try a “make it burn” pattern:

• On the whistle, athletes get into the toilet position and hold it for 20 seconds;
• On the next whistle, athletes lay down on their stomach, get back up, and wiggle their legs;
• On the next whistle, athletes get into the toilet position, and hold it for 15 seconds;
• On the next whistle, athletes jump on the spot three times and wiggle their legs;
• On the next whistle, athletes get into the toilet position, and hold it for 10 seconds;
• On the next whistle, athletes find a teammate and give her a big high five.

You can run this almost like a game of “Simon says” except instead of yelling out Simon Says, you just blow your whistle and the athletes imitate what you’re doing.

The next step is to have your athletes glide in the flower and toilet positions, like this:

Ask your athletes to skate as fast as they can to the ringette line and then glide. They should glide from the ringette line to the blue line in the flower position and from the blue line to the centre red line in the toilet position. As always, demonstrate this first.

Now, do the same thing back to the goal line. Repeat this a few times and then move on to striding:

Here are some other great games, relays, and drills for mastering the basic stance and striding in the toilet position:

Edges, Tight turns, and crossovers

Athletes have three edges: their flat edge when they’re standing exactly straight up, their outside edge and their inside edge. Every single skill in ringette uses some combination of these edges. Athletes will be better at everything they do if they can become more balanced on the insides and outsides of their skates.

First, provide your athletes with a vision:

You get a pass from your friend and see an open path to the net, if you can just snake around the player right in front of you. Can you picture sneaking around that player and driving straight at the net for a shot on goal? To do that, you’ll have to be able to turn on your skates.

The awareness approach for these skills starts the same way as every skating skill – are you in the toilet or flower position? So, for each of the drills below, have your athletes try it in the toilet and flower first.

The other awareness exercises are:

• Edges: As your kids get the hang for their edges, the awareness will be: are you making small cuts (turns) or big ones? The bigger the “c cut”, the more the athlete needs to get over onto the edge of her blade. So, as you practice their edges, you’ll encourage them to make bigger and bigger cuts and push their comfort zones.
• Tight turns: Are you staying low the whole time or do you stand up part way through your turn?
• Crossovers: are you making big or small crossovers?

Agility practice is one of the classic times where kids will fall down as they’re learning. That’s a great sign because it means they’re pushing their comfort level. Tell them to expect this and dole out lots of high fives for athletes who do push themselves and fall.

Here are the awareness progressions and some fun games / relays for agility:

Provide your athletes with this vision:

A girl on the other team gets the free pass in her own end. She’s going to try to skate up to the blue line and make an awesome pass to her buddy. It’s your job to check her. She’ll be trying to dodge you. Can you follow her wherever she goes so you can make the big steal? To do that, you’ll have to be able to stop and start. Can you picture yourself stopping on a dime and chasing after her?

The awareness exercise for stopping is to do a big, long stop and then try a short, crisp stop. We call the first one “stopping on a loonie” and the second one “stopping on a dime”. Have two coaches race across the width of the ice, from boards to boards. The demo gives the best effect if the coaches are tied at the far boards and the coach who does the short, crisp stop pulls ahead to win. Check out this example

Ask your athletes: “what is big about stopping on a loonie?” and “what is small about stopping on a dime”? You want them to identify that they are smaller, because they’re in the toilet position and the mark they leave on the ice is smaller.

Here are some drills for mastering stops:

Provide your athletes with this vision:

A girl on the other team just got a pass over the blue line. She’s going to skate hard to the front of your net. Can you picture yourself staying right in between her and your own net and forcing her to skate towards the boards instead of the scoring area? Can you picture yourself zooming along backwards?
The main awareness for this skating skill, as always, is whether your athletes are in a low, powerful position or off-balance. Particularly when they’re skating backwards, beginner athletes have a tendency to bend at their waist and end up leaning forward onto their toes.

Here are some awesome exercises you can use to help them master backwards skating:

Skating Review

• By the end of the year, your athletes should be very tired of hearing you talk about their powerful “toilet” position. This is the secret to every single skating skill.
• Be sure to spend 60-75% of your time on skating for the first two months and 50% of your time on skating for the rest of the year.
• Start with the basic stance and gliding and striding exercises.
• In November and December, begin to introduce agility and backwards skating.
• For technical instruction, do a lot of awareness exercises using waves.
• For “sneaking it in”, play lots of games and relays that incorporate the different skating skills.
• If you really want your team to dominate this year, consider getting yourself a copy of our skating product: http://www.ringettetips.com/dvdsbooks/

Give your athletes this vision for passing:

You are skating up to the other team’s blue line. Your teammate is open with no defenders behind her. If you can get her this pass, she’s in all alone. Can you hit her with an awesome pass?

The first key to passing is the proper grip, which we reviewed above. Be sure to spend one on one time with each athlete to make sure she masters it during the first month of the season.

Stationary passing

Introduce stationary passing in your first practice and emphasize it during your first 3-5 practices.

The awareness exercise for stationary passing is: are you looking at where you’re passing (versus down at the ice) and are you pointing to where you’re passing (versus having a bit of a wild follow through)?

Demonstrate both ways and then have your athletes practice. They’ll certainly understand the importance of looking at their target if you ask them to pass while staring down at the ice.

For receiving, the awareness is, are you putting your stick down too early (and poking the ring), too late (and missing the ring altogether) or just right? Again, ask your athletes to try too early and too late on purpose. This will get them focusing really closely on their timing.

Here are some awesome drills for perfecting your passing accuracy and your timing:

Once your athletes can make a stationary pass, teach them how to pass to a moving target. The awareness exercise for lead passing is: did your pass go too far, was it too short, or was it just right? Our theme song for lead passing is “ain’tnothin’ gonna break my strike, nobody’s gonna slow me down. Oh no. I’ve got to keep on moving”! Every time you work on lead passes, remind your athletes that a perfect pass is one where your teammate doesn’t have to slow down or speed up. She can catch the pass at just the speed she’s skating at. Be sure to demonstrate all three things:

Here are some fun drills for perfecting lead passing:

Note: the full ice horseshoe is relatively advanced. Beginners will have to run it without defence in the middle until they’ve really got the hang of it.

Note: the 3 woman weave is also advanced – likely only appropriate for U10, not U7.

If there’s one thing that makes a young ringette player beam, it’s scoring a goal using an accurate shot. You’ll start with the slider shot but can quickly progress to teaching your girls how to do backhand and wrist shots.

Here is the vision:

You’ve deked into the prime scoring area and the goalie is only covering half the net. You see an opening in the far corner of the net. Can you zing the ring into that open area and score a beauty for the team?

The awareness for the slider shot is the same as passing. Usually when we introduce shooting, though, we also introduce the concept of “quiet eye”.

Quiet Eye is a concept you must use every time you shoot.
'Quiet Eye' comes from the groundbreaking research of Dr. Joan Vickers at the University of Calgary. She wanted to know why NBA basketball players like Shaquille O'Neal couldn't sink a high percentage of their free throws no matter how much they worked on their shot. Using an expensive computer helmet on athletes to track their gaze, Dr. Vickers discovered two things:1. If you look at a target for at least one second before you shoot, you are more likely to hit it.
2. You do not need to look at your target while you shoot, because you’re 'aiming command' is set before you release the shot.Dr. Vickers’ work reminds us that looking at a small target for ONE SECOND before shooting is the key to good shooting accuracy.How to Use Quiet EyeIf you are a player, here’s how to use Quiet Eye to make your shot more accurate immediately:

To help your kids become shooting masters, we strongly recommend you get yourself a copy of our shooting products: http://www.ringettetips.com/dvdsbooks/

For the backhand shot, the trick is to teach your athletes how to get the edge of their stick under the lip of the ring and “shovel” it up and towards the boards.

For the wrist shot, your athletes must learn the wrist shot motion and then be able to get the corner of their stick under the lip of the ring.
Check out these videos:

Here are some of our favourite shooting drills:

Of course, your athletes can have the best shots in the world but they won’t score much if they can’t get into the prime scoring area – what we call the “hot spot”. Most athletes shoot from too far away without knowing it. To help your athletes develop their awareness, have them do each shooting drill two ways: first, shoot from far away and then from the hot spot (almost right on top of the crease). They should notice that they score way more goals from in close.

Ring protection

Our expression for kids is that “if you can’t catch me, you can’t check me”. Keeping the ring for your athletes is all about skating. The tricky part is that, when they’re just learning the basics, it’s incredibly difficult for athletes to multi-task. Skating, while hiding the ring, and looking to make a pass can be too much to think about. So beginner athletes in particular tend to slow down and just lean on their sticks as soon as they sense pressure from a checker. Provide them with this vision:

You just got the pass from our goalie. You can see a teammate wide open in the middle zone. Can you picture yourself busting pass the other team’s little checkers and starting your team on a fast break all the way down the ice? Can you imagine leaving the other team in the dust as your hair flaps in the wind from all of your fast skating?

The awareness exercise for ring protection is: are you skating at top speed, like you would if you were on a breakaway?

Or, have you become distracted by the checkers, slowing down and leaning on your stick while your speed grinds to a halt?

As always, we recommend that you demo both ways and then have your athletes do these drills at top speed and also “coasting”. They should notice that they do a much better job of keeping the ring when they accelerate through the pressure.

Checking

The flip side of protecting the ring is trying to steal it. Here, the awareness is: are you shoulder to shoulder, matching the ring carrier’s foot speed, or are you coasting and reaching in to check her from behind?

Give your athletes a clear demo of getting shoulder to shoulder and stealing the ring by using a rainbow checking motion under the bottom third of the other player’s stick.

To master checking, you can use all the drills above, under ring protection as well as this one:

Here are a few sample practice plans to help you put it all together:

Ringette Beginner Drill Book

Cheers,
Lisa