Abstract
In selecting athletes to teams, coaches should consider many aspects of assessment including physical, psychological and sociological (Reilly et al., 2000). However, the majority of coaches focus on physical assessment with the goal of predicting the athlete's future success (Lidor et al., 2005). The purpose of this study was to assess coaches' perception of talent using a series of hockey drills identified by coaches as reflecting necessary skills for hockey success in a sample of 14-18 year old (n=13) high school hockey players. Step 1 involved surveying coaches as to the most important traits and skills used in identifying talent in teenage players. In Step 2, data from the surveys were used to create a list of hockey drills that could be used to identify talent in youth hockey players. In Step 3, 13 players were videotaped executing these drills, and in Step 4, seven high school coaches and two expert coaches ranked the player videos into the top 5 and bottom 5 players. Overall, two players were consistently identified by all coaches as being in the top 5, while two players were consistently identified as being in the bottom 5. The lack of agreement on the majority of players highlights the difficulty in identifying "talent" in this population. Potentially most interesting was the extent to which the coaches disagreed on players. There were 7 players who had rankings in both the top and bottom 5 by both high school and expert coaches. Results will be discussed with respect to the suitability of using physical drills for team selection and will provide suggestions for future research.Acknowledgments: SSHRC