3 Enlightening Perspectives About HEP

What does HEP mean to an association? It depends on who you ask and what part of HEP we are discussing. The following article, provides input from a parent and coach of the St. Cloud Youth Hockey Association as well as insight from the ACE/HEP Coordinator.

From a parent’s perspective: A parent in our association responded this way when asked about HEP: “My wife and son took the test together and she was impressed with the thoroughness of the training. You really had to read and put an effort into understanding the goals of HEP (which is great). I think doing this together as a team (pre-season meeting) would be a powerful statement. I like it!” We have established a “Parent Education” page on our website which directs folks to read materials of interest and view videos that bring to light the types of behavior we all don’t want to reflect either on our kids or to others. We also developed an electronic code of conduct acknowledgment to say “yes, I have read and understand the material.” This is a way we can track our progress when it comes to parents who viewed the material or not. If we have issues throughout the season we can reflect back on the material available.

From a coach’s perspective: HEP testing can be a valuable tool for measuring our successes without the pressure of game records or scores. From a coach in our association: “I believe that HEP testing is important for the players and parents. The coaches can use it to assess if they are working the right things in regards to skill development. My main issue is that at the end of the year it is difficult to make sure that we are giving our player/parents good feedback about how they have developed and what they need to work on in the future. I love the forms that we use that document the early season scores as well as the end of the year scores but it is vital that we as coaches make sure to utilize this and communicate it to our players/parents.”

From an ACE/HEP coordinator’s perspective: “It can be a challenge. I have tried over the past few years to make sure all of our parents read and sign the code of conduct document to have in all of the team folders and we hand out all the free material available through Minnesota Hockey in the form of DVDs and online resources. We make sure that all the coaches understand their responsibilities as leaders and mentors, We coordinate the HEP testing at the beginning and end of each season supplying managers and coaches with the appropriate spreadsheets and testing materials, yet you feel like sometimes it still is not enough. However, I do know it has made an impact in our association. We have used the HEP testing as a way to sort out our younger age teams on an initial basis to get them the most directed instruction for the season to come. We also have managed to get 190 parent entries to view the “Parent Education” portion of our website, which in turn represents a large portion of our association’s kids. Just the viewing and reading of that material alone, I feel, can have a positive impact on our hockey culture.”

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Eric Altena, ACE/HEP coordinator for this insight into HEP.