The Ride to The Rink: Kiersten Sires on What College Coaches Notice Early

This episode is powered by NHL Sense Arena. Hello, hockey skaters and goalies around the world, and welcome back to another edition of The Ride to the Rink. I don't know where you're at today. You might be in the car going to hockey. You might be in your living room or your room just daydreaming about going to college and playing college hockey at the highest level. So today we brought in our friend Kirsten here, who is very involved in the college hockey process. She's created a place called Two A Days. You can check it out, where it's kind of like a rate my coach or a coaches can put themselves out there to make sure that they're explaining what it is that they do with their association or their team. There's a lot of great resources there. But we brought her in today to talk to you about your dreams and your path to maybe college hockey one day. So I'm going to throw it to my friend Christy here, who's going to ask the first question. We'll go back and forth and then we'll get you back to your day.

Hi, kids, and Kirsten. Welcome. We're so excited to have you on this episode of Ride to the Rink. Um, a lot of kids have dreams about playing hockey in college, NHL, women's hockey. There's so many big dreams out there. What can kids do right now at this young age to start making those dreams come true?

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I'm super pumped. Um, I would say first and foremost, making sure that you have just daily routines, plans, and schedules. Okay. So what are you going to be doing every single day to get a little bit better at hockey? Number one. And then number two, how can you find out more information about what colleges you might want to play at? Um, we talked about this a little bit earlier today, but I think following some programs on social media is always a good start if you have social media. Uh, go give programs that you want to play at a follow and kind of see what the vibes are like. Understand what that is. And then also, again, big thing with the schedules and just understanding what you need to do every single day to get better at your sport. And then also, what can you do to be a better teammate every single day? Um, we we talked about this with recruiting specifically, but being a good teammate and having great body language out on the ice is super, super important for college coaches to uh kind of want to recruit you. What about school and grades, Kirsten? The most important. There's a lot of a lot of college coaches that we've talked to out there, and you can see interviews with coaches where they talk specifically about how much easier it is to recruit a player that has good grades, puts them in a better situation to be able to go to what to whatever school they want to, and for the coaches to be able to advocate for them to get them, you know, through the door at the admissions process.

You know, Kirsten, I talk to my kids all the time of if you can work hard on the ice, you can work hard in the classroom and cleaning the house and doing it, whatever the chores are that you all hate to do, kids. I understand that, but there is a congruency between the output you put on the ice, you can do that with everything. And the kids that do it with everything are actually practicing that compete level, that persistence more and more by doing it at home. Now, the question I have for you, Kirsten, is this um you get to deal with a lot of college coaches, keeping in mind the age of our audience. What's something these kids, you listeners, may not know about what college coaches are looking for and what can they do? Kind of feeding off Christy's question. What are the things they need to learn now to impress those coaches later on? And I'm like, not talking just about uh, I mean, school is very important, and there's other aspects. It's the people side of things that I'm trying to dive into.

Yeah, absolutely. I think uh little things like introducing yourself to coaches whenever they're around, if you ever run into them at any point, um, making sure that you're taking the time to be a good teammate. Uh, you never know when somebody's watching you. There's games that stream now, there's coaches that are talking, everything else, parents talking. Um, so you want to make sure that you're first and foremost a great teammate. Um, even if opponent falls or you know, there's a precarious situation happen, you want to make sure that you're helping. You want to make sure that you are uh cheering your teammates on, even if you're on the bench yourself. Um, and you're just all around always trying to help your teammates and yourself get better every single day. Um, showing up to practice early, doing things like that kind of go a long way in building those habits. And those are things that your own coach can talk about to college coaches eventually. Um, that will set you apart from other players.

Yeah, and those habits, kids, don't just show up when you're 17 or 18 years old. You build those habits, as Kirsten said. You can do this at eight years old, 10 years old, 12 years old, 14. You should always be introducing yourself to your coaches and their staff, who you are, what your name is, how excited you are to play. And we also talk about Kirsten advocating for yourself. If you're in the middle of a season and you don't like what's happening, you've got to learn, kids, how to communicate that to your coaches in an effective way. And by the way, the effective way is not running to mom and dad or your guardian and saying, Hey, can you talk to coach for me? I don't like my playing time. All right. You may be right, kids. You you may totally have a reason to be upset. Learn how to have those conversations now, okay? Because they're going to help you later on. All right. And we talk about college recruiting. I'm just going to reiterate this for the end of the episode. Number one, first and foremost, your grades really, really, really matter. Do well in school. Sounds like an infomercial from the age. Do well in school, kids. All right. That's number one. Two, your output. Is that effort limited to just hockey, or is it applied to everything that you do? And number three, your communication and your and your ability to talk to other people. It's an insanely important skill if you want to play at the highest levels. And again, if you're listening to this show, you probably do. So keep that going. Kirsten, any final thoughts before we close this out?

Yeah, have fun with it. Like, have fun with the sport, you know, have a great time, be out there, enjoy it as much as you possibly can. Um, especially, you know, when you're you're learning the foundations and eventually you want to grow into whatever you want to do, uh, which you can probably do. Uh, just make sure that you're having fun.

I love it. Kirsten Sires have kids. Yeah. No, and you're hearing it from all of us. You know, work hard, have fun, go learn something. Uh, I love it all. Christy, I didn't mean to cut you off there. But again, that's gonna do it for this edition of The Ride to the Rink. Make sure you check out Two A Days and Kirsten Sires for Christy Cash, Anna Burns. I'm Lee Elias Kids. Remember, wherever you're at on your hockey journey, we believe in you. You should too. See you on the next slide.