When you watch field hockey you may have noticed that the team that passes the ball the best usually will win the game. So it’s interesting to see a lot of teams and their players really struggling with this basic skill. Watching professional players, you will see them pass and receive the ball at phenomenal speeds. It seems for them making a bad pass is almost impossible.

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Watch the Pros Pass

If you coach a hockey team, you should definitely be taking a look at how the pro teams practise their passing. Every pass within the game is crucial and has a purpose. Watching a professional field hockey drill will show you a variety of different passes that look seamless. Whilst they make it look easy and have a great talent for the game, these players have practised their passing so that doing it correctly becomes habit. Each pass has a purpose.

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Passing Drills

Coaching a youth or non-professional hockey team means you will have a lot of different hockey drills ready to go. These are what you can start out with to build the fundamentals of passing. Using passing drills will allow your players to learn important skills such as angles, communication, spacing and timing. All of these work together to develop the players’ knowledge of playing an offensive game. Without these, a team won’t be able to receive or give passes and the game will be lost.

When it comes to drills, many coaches go for the practices that focus only on running and shooting. These are important, but often the ability to be able to pass and receive the ball is completely overlooked. This is why it’s important to make passing practice much more of a priority. If you need ideas for passing drills, check out https://www.sportplan.net/drills/Hockey/.

The Right Skills

It’s the practising and learning of passing skills that will separate the good players from the great players. As players begin to rise through the ranks and enter into professional hockey, passing skills are a prerequisite that they must have to be able to progress.

As long as players and coaches are equally putting in the time and the effort to develop the crucial skill of passing, you will see the overall team improve by leaps and bounds.