By Sam Laskaris /
 
When it comes time to decide which hockey school/camp to send a young player to, there are an infinite number of questions for parents to ask.

For simplicity, parents could simply send their child to the nearest camp. Or the cheapest one. Or the one a friend is going to.

But for former National Hockey League player Cliff Ronning, he believes the most important thing parents need to find out before choosing a camp is rather simple.

“The biggest thing (to find out) is if they’re going to have fun,” said Ronning, who operates his own camp out of Osoyoos, B.C. “If they’re having fun, they’re going to want to learn.”

Ronning feels it’s rather hard to teach team concepts in a camp environment, since for the most part players wouldn’t know all the other campers.

“I like to teach them skills that will help them in game situations,” he said. “I more or less concentrate on the basics – shooting, passing and scoring.”

Ray Dyke, who has been in the hockey camp business for more than 20 years, said parents should find out who will be instructing at the camp before sending their child there.

“Qualifications of staff (is the most important thing),” said Dyke, who is now in his third year of running the Canadian Goaltending Academy in Barrie, Ont.

After finding out who will be instructing at the camp, Dyke said it is rather easy to then find out about the instructors’ backgrounds.

“You can search them in hockey databases,” he said. “You want to know have they played the game or are they book readers. If you haven’t lived the position, you can’t teach it.”

Dyke also believes it’s important for parents to try and find out whether a camp or school is a fairly established business or one that just runs briefly.

“Do they operate all year or do they operate for two weeks in the summer?” Dyke said about another question parents should be asking.

Meanwhile, Cecille Turcotte, the office manager for the Turcotte Hockey School, also fields her share of questions from parents all over North America.

That’s because she helps to run the schools, which focus on stickhandling, throughout Canada and the United States.

The Turcotte Hockey School operates at about 200 locations each year. In Canada alone there are schools throughout British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Turcotte said an oft-asked question from parents is the ratio of instructors to students.

“They like to know how many instructors we have,” she said. “We have 1:7 (instructors for campers). And they want to know where the instructors are coming from.”

And then most parents are also curious as to how much bang they are going to get for their bucks.

“They normally call and ask how long is the course and how much on-ice instruction will they get,” Turcotte said.

Another question that arises frequently is the calibre of the other players who will be attending.

“They want to know if there are elite camps and whether there will be other elite players there,” she said.