Mission

The Goalie Academy is committed to providing the best goaltending instruction and training program to all levels of goalies through quality on-ice and off-ice drills and personal attention so that every goalie that comes to us meets his or her true potential. 

Goals Organization:
The Goalie Academy's goal is to achieve a reputation as North America's leader in goaltending instruction.

Individual Goalies:
For the beginner and intermediate goalies, we want to instill a firm foundation of the fundamental skills required to excel at this unique position. 

For the advanced goalie, we want to provide direction for understanding the more intricate details of goaltending and knowledge of the intangible skills necessary to be an effective goalie.  We also want to assist goalies who are capable of playing at higher levels of hockey (prep school, junior, college and even professional) attain those high aspirations through coaching and guidance. 

Philosophy

With us, goaltending is not just a position, but it is a PASSION!  At The Goalie Academy, we teach everything about both the art and the science of goaltending.  We believe that goalies should be taught to master ALL skills necessary to play the position.  The more skills you have, the better you will be and throughout your playing career, different coaches will want you to do different things, so you must be able to adapt and to do it all!

We teach the goalies to "play the situation", rather than simply playing the puck, and that at the appropriate moment in a game a goalie must use every fundamental save technique within their tool kit.  Therefore, although techniques such as the two-pad stack are not used nearly as often as the butterfly, ALL goalies (NHL included) still use these skills when the right times arises.  Therefore, we teach all fundamental skills (along with excellent butterfly technique!) and we are the best at teaching goalies the right time to use these saves.  Here is what one camper had to say about our technical and communication abilities:

"I am in awe of what you two and your staff accomplished over three days...the logistics alone must have been staggering!  The coaches and instructional assistants were absolutely wonderful...what a talented and tireless team!  It is rare to find people who are so skilled at a "physical" art to be such capable "verbal-communicators."  - Maggie Kelly, attended the Laurel Enhancement Camp

The Goalie Academy coaches will only try to correct what needs to be corrected.  Far too many coaches attempt to repair what is not broken.  Conversely, our staff analyzes the goalie for weaknesses and then focuses on correcting areas of the goalie's game where we see trends in goals or lower percentage  save selections.  We do not try to make very goalie use the same style or try to change areas of the goalie's game that are already strong.

We are also extremely concerned with the quality of the drills we perform on the ice and in ensuring that the goalie practices each drill in a fundamentally correct fashion. We truly believe that “practice alone doesn’t make perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect.”  The number of repetitions of a drill are of little significance if the drill is not properly completed.  To that end, we strongly believe in a lower number of repetitions performed with technical perfection and with the greatest intensity.

For this reason, all of our drills encompass the three (3) main components of rapid skill development:

• Short Duration (to keep energy and focus high)
• Competition (for HIGH Intensity)
• Confined Space (for more repetitions in a short time frame)

Drills that encompass these three components ensure that our goalies get the best possible training in addition to the superior and immediate instruction/feedback they receive. 

Again, we believe in providing goalies with instruction surrounding all the basics of goaltending; butterfly
saves, two-pad slides, glove and blocker saves, stick handling, recovery skills, rebound control and everything else you can think of.   We believe that there is a time and place for every fundamental move in the goalies repertoire, so we feel it is our obligation to teach all saves.  We also teach the different situations under which a goalie will make every type of save.  Goalies that become predictable will not last long at higher levels of play.

We believe that a goalie should develop under his or her own style, thus we will teach the methods that best fit the individual goalie’s style of play.  All goalies are different.  Different sizes with different abilities thus they play differently.  This is the ART of goaltending! 

We allow goalies to be themselves and we do this by not over-coaching.  We do not "fix" things that aren't broken.  We also coach by using the Principles of Goaltending:

I.   Maximize Net Coverage

II.  Maximize Efficiency

III. Maximize Balance

IV. Maximize Range of Motion

V. Master Timing

At each camp we have at least five goalie instructors, none of whom played the game the same way.  Thus, every Goalie Academy goalie is exposed to five different goaltending philosophies from which he or she can take bits and pieces and apply to his or her game.

Lastly, we still believe hockey is played for fun. Although we are extremely serious about what we teach, we still leave time for fun on and off the ice. The drills we do for fun also provide goalies with practice and experience at other parts of their game.

Why is The Goalie Academy the better camp choice?

• Qualified Instructors at EVERY station!  The Goalie Academy has instructors with knowledge and experience at every skill development station to provide continuous instruction and feedback.  You've been to other camps that either have a few coaches going around to stations or these camps have some stations completely unattended by a coach or only operated by a young shooter who doesn't know the first thing about goaltending.  The Goalie Academy has our highly qualified staff of coaches manning each and every station all the time!

• Experienced Instructors. Our instructors, all played at least at the college level and some have played at higher minor league pro levels.  Our staff has an average age of 29 and are the most qualified TEAM in the industry.  Plus, their education allows them to communicate extremely well while they TEACH.   Other popular camps have one "big name" guy who often isn't even at the camp or who doesn't frequent the ice to teach and to coach, while they hire inexpensive and very young goalies who are sometimes the same age or just a few years older than the goalies attending the camp.  The Goalie Academy gives you the instructional value for which you are paying.

• Personal Attention.  The Goalie Academy gets to know the goalies personally.  Our instructors can tell the parents what the goalies need to work on because they really know the kids!  Other camps place name tags on the helmets or jerseys so that they remember the goalies' names because they don't take the time to get to know them.  The Goalie Academy never uses name tags, because we don't need them.  We'll really know each goalie because we take the important time with them to get to know them!

• We Teach The Principles of Goaltending.  The Goalie Academy has developed The Principles of Goaltending from which we teach the position.  With 3 main laws, we can teach goalies of every style, ability, size, and shape, where other camps can only teach their "way" of playing the position.  Look no further than the NHL to see that Brodeur is different from Lundqvist, who is different than Turco, who is different than Luongo and so on.  The fact is that many different "styles" are successful and there isn't one that is better than the others. Only at The Goalie Academy can we teach them all, because we know the real reasons why goalies should do certain moves and those reasons are The Principles of Goaltending!

• Smart Work vs Hard Work: The Goalie Academy makes sure that the hard work goalies put forth is actually helping them develop.  A major misconception practiced at other camps is that simply working hard (sweating) is an acceptable outcome, well not if it is working hard while reinforcing bad habits.  The Goalie Academy works goalies hard, but they also do it in a smart way that also promotes proper habits and therefore develops proper skills.

What other reasons should you attend The Goalie Academy?

The Goalie Academy offers other great value added items to their camps that makes them a better camp choice.

At the Goalie Academy, we provide you with:

• All Goalie Instructors with college degrees
• All Goalie Instructors that have played at the collegiate and/or minor professional levels
• Instructors that really care to get to know each goalie's strengths and weaknesses
• Some Weekend training camps that are convenient for the whole family
• Core of instructors that teach at EVERY camp
• Intense training with paid & volunteer shooters for realism
• Skill competitions for fun and for testing your development
• Game-like drills for a more realistic learning environment
• The absolute best attention to making the right save at the right time
• Individual video analysis as well as individual on-ice attention
• Great off-ice training
• Insightful evaluations that also provide you with drills from which to improve
• PowerPoint and video assisted lectures before each session for mental preparation &instruction
• Low goalie to instructor ratio