Learn to teach

Puck-stopping Pretoria teenager breaks new ground

24.07.2015
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South Africa's National team goalie and up-and-coming goalie coach Marcello Strydom (right). Here together with compatriot Ryan Boyd, goalie at the 2015 IIHF Development camp. Inset: Strydom at the 2015 senior Division IIB Worlds. Photo: Toni Saarinen

VIERUMAKI - He represented South Africa at three separate World Championships last season, but 17-year-old Marcello Strydom is finding himself wrestling with the decision of whether goaltending or coaching is his true calling.

For anyone having watched South Africa's national team in action during the last decade, the presence of the Bock brothers guarding their net can hardly have gone unnoticed. Ashley and Gary, a man-mountain pair of siblings, each of them towering up on both sides of the two-metre mark while weighing being well above 100 kilos, have given the epithet of parking the bus in front of goal a new meaning.

At 185 cm, Marcello Strydom will never measure up to the Bock brothers’ lofty height, but appears to be well underway in carving out a name for himself in his own right. Not only did the 17-year-old step out on the ice to represent South Africa at U18, U20 and senior level at the World Championships last year, but also still found time to attend school and blaze a new trail as a coach for the next generation of South African netminders.

"There has never truly been a goalie coach in South Africa and as I didn't think there was any interest in goalies I decided it shouldn't be like that," said the teenage Pretoria Capitals-prospect on how his interest arose for coaching his own peers.

"I only truly started with this last year, but since I started to coach when turning 17 I have doubled the amount of goalies in South Africa, which is why they at the South African Ice Hockey Association thought that maybe it would be a good idea that I should come to the camp in Vierumaki."

Having ventured overseas for goalie camps in Minnesota, USA twice in the past, he arrived in Finland last month for the 2015 IIHF Development camp to further his repertoire and skills in coaching netminders.

"Before coming here to Finland I asked our national team coaches of their expectations of sending me to a camp where I would be learning not to coach goalies, but to coach other coaches to become goalie coaches,” he said. "So being able to learn more about being a coach of a coach did sound interesting so I was well up for the challenge," 

Strydom sums up his Vierumaki-experience from the 2015 Development camp as follows:

"I must say that I am extremely pleased with how the coaches here in Vierumaki love hockey and try to take things into a different light," he said. "The facilities here are amazing, everyone is helpful and every single thing that I learn here is knowledge that I can take back home and see what can be applied at our country's situation. I can start small, develop the minds of both players and parents to let them understand what it is to be a goalie and to be a goalie coach then they would end up falling in love with the game too just like I once did.”

Hailing from Pretoria, the country's administrative capital, Strydom grew up across town of the aforementioned Bock-brothers, who over the years have played an integral part as the last line of defence for South Africa. While the older of the two, Gary, guarded the net for his country at World Championships between 2003-10, it is the younger brother, 27-year-old Ashley, who made his debut at the 2005 World Championships and is still going strong and who was singled out for special praise by Strydom as a big influence in his own development.

"When I started playing , Gary, was by then already growing out of hockey so he did not really coach or anything. Ashley is a great goalie and it is wonderful to see that this tall giant over two meters is the friendliest guy in the world. Everytime I saw him at the rink when I was growing up he gave me hints that would helped me improve my game," he said.

Strydom's week-long stint in Vierumaki comes in the wake of a hectic season for the 17-year old. Being first choice for South Africa's U20 team at the World Championship, Division III in New Zealand this year, he later went to Chinese Taipei as a back-up for Charl Pretorius at the U18 World Championships, Division III Group A. In the spring, a phone call put him on course for a hat-trick of World Championships in less than four months.

"I was away with the U18 team when I got a call and got asked if I would be able to make it for the senior national team who were about to play at the World Championship in Cape Town. I said that I would love that, but they would need to ask my parents first," said Strydrom.
He got the green light from back home and accepted the last-minute call-up for a place at the 2015 World Championship Division II Group B, which took place on on home ice and was a dream come true for Strydom at such a tender age.

"I practise with the men's national team most of the year, but still I did not expect to get any playing time, so when I got the chance to go on the ice it was an amazing experience," said Strydom who made his senior World Championship debut in Cape Town's Grandwest Ice Arena, playing just under 28 minutes against Israel and conceding one goal in a 6-3 loss.

Despite South Africa being relegated and now having to try to bounce back in next year's Division III, Strydom sings the praises of the national team's coaching duo of Bob Mancini and Louis Melone, who encouraged the teenage netminder to further dedicate himself to try and raise the bar in the country's development of goalies.

"Bob and Louis are really passionate coaches and it was they who convinced me to come over here to Vierumaki. We are starting to develop young goalies now and if they progress well, we will also send them and more coaches over here to Finland," said Strydom who was joined in Vierumaki by another promising netminder from South Africa with Ryan Boyd was taking part in the Development Camp as a player.

Now in his last year at school, Strydom is set to continue with the subject of goaltending on the schedule for years to come. But asking him which one of coaching or playing it is that he prefers clearly puts him into a dilemma.

"Now, that is a tough one. I can't pick between those two" he said. "Maybe in a few years if playing doesn't work out I will say coaching, but right now I love them both way too much."


HENRIK MANNINEN
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