By Peter Watts /
It’s been six years since Rick Alexander came home following a lengthy hockey career in Europe. In that time, he’s started a family and built a new career as the head instructor of National Sports Development’s growing hockey program.
“This came along at just the right time,” he told me. “We’d had enough of living in Europe. I spent over 20 years in Germany and in Switzerland playing and coaching hockey. So when Brian Strong came to me and talked about what he had in mind for NSD, I was excited.”
In the six years since that first conversation, the NSD model has grown into a major part of the sport and academic scene in Calgary. NSD operates hockey programs in conjunction with the academic agenda at Lord Beaverbrook and Bowness senior high schools, at A.E. Cross Junior High School, and at Tanbridge Academy. At each location, students get on-ice instruction and have access to dryland training at NSD locations in Calgary.
“We started out six years ago with a dozen players,” says Alexander. “Tyler Myers, Joe Colbourne, Brandon Kozun, Kevin King, Matt McKay, Kris Moore, Dylan Flett and James Reid were among the first year players in the program. All of them are in the WHL today except for Kris, who’s playing for Camrose in the Alberta Junior League, and Colbourne, who’s at the University of Denver. Colbourne and Myers were both first round picks in the NHL draft last June. All of them, plus a fair number of players in various pro and amateur leagues continue to train with us during the summer. Our off-ice conditioning programs which are run by people like Sean Hope-Ross are very popular with athletes.”
Kozun, who’s blossomed into one of the bright young stars of the Calgary Hitmen, speaks highly of the education he got while attending NSD.
“There’s no doubt it helped me get to where I am today,” he told me. “The off-ice training equipment is state of the art and for a smaller player like myself, it made a huge difference in preparing me to play at the WHL level. And I learned a lot about the game from coach Alexander as well. I still go back to train with them in the summer.”
Darren Olsen, headmaster of Tanbridge School, is another big fan of the NSD model.
“We contract NSD to provide the hockey component of what we offer,” says Olsen. “We’ve got 38
youngsters in the program this year. They get three hours a week on the ice plus some classroom work on things like leadership and sportsmanship. They get access to NSD’s off-ice training program. And they take a full academic load of classes. Our hockey students are scattered across Grades 4 to 8 and they play with their community teams since we don’t have a team of our own.
Alexander will take a team of 13- and 14-year-olds from Tanbridge to Germany for a hockey tournament in April.
“We’re going to Fusen,” he told me. “It’s a ten day trip. We’ll stay in a hotel this first year although if we go back there in the future, I hope the boys can be billeted. It will be a great experience for them.”
“It’s all about turning out good citizens. If any of the players go on to earn a living in the game, that’s a bonus. But we believe in the motto…our aspirations are our possibilities.”
“And our model is drawing interest from elsewhere. We’ve had a coach from Poland here, recently. He runs a program just outside Krakow and he wanted to learn about what we do. And I hope next year we’ll have at least one foreign student who’ll be here to be part of our program.” |