Organizational Background
Parents for Responsible Elevated Performance (PREP) is an alliance of hockey parents and coaches committed to helping develop, advise, and monitor high-performance hockey development training options for youth hockey players in Montana.
North American Preparatory Hockey Academy (NAPHA) is a performance hockey development academy offering mid-day training programs in Whitefish, Montana, weekend development camps across the state of Montana, and summer hockey camps. NAPHA programs are available to all Montana Amateur Hockey Association (MAHA) U8-U18 players, girls, and boys, seeking to expand age-appropriate skills and gain additional high-performance hockey training.
Joint PREP and NAPHA Development Program Mission Statement
PREP and NAPHA are forming an alliance based on common objectives for providing responsible high-performance hockey development training options for girls and boys U8-U14 Montana hockey players. Our joint mission is to complement player development in local MAHA programs by providing high-performance training opportunities, build players confidence, advance skills and performance capabilities to move on to higher levels of hockey, make new friends, and have fun doing it.
The Development Program Overview
The Development Program (DP) will operate year-round with roughly one development weekend scheduled per month. A typical development weekend will include 3 one and a half hour on-ice training sessions for each age group. Training sessions will be geared toward high-performance skill development using age-appropriate American Development Model (ADM) principles, with an emphasis on station-based practices and small area games to facilitate a high degree of repetitions, puck touches, and quick decision-making in game-like scenarios. A player that chooses to attend all 12 weekends throughout the year will benefit from an additional 54 hours of high development skills training annually beyond what they can receive in their local organizations. We believe that a supplementary training program such as this will greatly enhance the hockey skills and development of players across the state and better prepare them to play at elite levels when they are older.
During the winter season (November – March), every effort will be made to offer development weekends during scheduled MAHA blackout dates so that they do not interfere with local team schedules. In the event that a development weekend must be scheduled during a non-MAHA blackout weekend then it will be made clear to players and parents that playing for local teams comes first. It is our belief that players should not miss local MAHA team practices or games and should only attend DP weekends when there is not a conflict with their local program. Players in the development program are not required to commit to any number of development weekends over the course of the year. Players can sign up for and attend weekends that work with their schedules. Players that wish to take part of the year off or play other sports are highly encouraged to do so as we believe in the ADM principles that players in the U8-U14 levels should be playing multiple sports to develop overall athleticism.