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KNOCKS By giving more kids the opportunity to attend player development camps close to home, USA Hockey is looking to develop more high- level players in the future. camp. What he really saw was opportunity. There were other noticeable differences as well, such as 14-year-old boys who were already shaving and others who had never used a razor before. There were players towering over 6-feet tall competing against others who only barely crossed the 5-foot threshold. A s Tom Lampl looked onto the ice at Colorado College he didn't just see budding young hockey players participating in a USA Hockey development As parents know all too well, kids develop at different rates. Some are late bloomers with delayed growth spurts. Others shoot up early and then struggle to grow into their bodies. And still others simply choose to stop playing hockey or do not develop any further. AT REVAMPED CAMPS New Format Allows More Players To Train And Develop At Multi-District Camps // BY JUSTIN FELISKO matriculated through the program. "The evidence was that 75 percent of the kids that participated in the 14 Camp weren't showing up at the 17 Camp," said Kevin McLaughlin, USA Hockey's senior director of Hockey Development. "They weren't the same kids." Like the other coaches at the Western Regional Multi-District High Performance Boys Select 14 Camp, Lampl, the Rocky Mountain District associate coach in chief, had no idea who among the 180 campers would become the next big star at an age where puberty hasn't yet run its course. It is an issue USA Hockey has been grappling with for as long as it has held its annual player development camps. Over the years the organization's player devel- opment committee has noticed a dramatic turnover by the time an age group Lampl was not surprised by the data compiled by USA Hockey. He's been track- ing the Rocky Mountain District kids for 13 years, and this year only 50 percent of those the District sent to last year's 14 national camp returned for the 15 camp. "I think that just tells you we were narrow- ing the pyramid too soon and that we needed to broaden the base," Lampl said. "This camp is a step in the right direction." One of many examples of that is recent Los Angeles King's Stanley Cup champion Trevor Lewis. The Salt Lake City native who scored two goals during the Stanley Cup Finals never made it to a National Select Camp until he was 17. That's why many in the player develop- ment community felt it was better to be inclusive than exclusive. So they dropped the five-day national camp that catered to 180 14-year-olds and replaced it with a series of regional development camps that can impact "roughly 1,200 kids." "We wanted to expose more kids to the development that happens at the 14 national camp," McLaughlin said. "That way we can throw a broader blanket over more kids at a younger age so that the ones that do actually end up at the 17 camp have had three years of coaching and exposure to age-appropriate development." Yale Associate Head Coach Red Gendron, one of many high-level coaches at this year's Southeast District camp, said the lessons the USAHOCKEYMAGAZINE.COM SEPTEMBER.2012 29