Samm O.

I have been coaching field hockey since 2009, with a high school junior varsity team. I then moved to a travel/club program Allied/Fusion, where I grew the program from 2 teams to 6 teams in the 4 years span when I was there. Age groups went from u12 thru u19, we competed at the regional and national levels. I am now a coach with the Richmond Strikers field hockey program, this will be our full second season. Age groups are u12 thru u19.

I began playing field hockey in 8th grade. I went on to play varsity during my 4 years of high school. While in high school, I also competed with a travel club. We competed in regional and national tournaments. After graduating from high school, I continued my field hockey career at Eastern Mennonite University. I was only fortunate enough to play one year in college, before suffering a career ending injury. I did not let that get in my way, I just moved to the other side of the field in the coaching realm. I have two degrees in psychology and exercise science which are very significant to my coaching today. Not only am I able to help athletes obtain where they want to be physically but also breaking the barrier of mentality.

In one word, Intensity. I expect the athletes to come to me with not only the love of the game, but also with a willingness to want to improve. I typically start all of my workouts, with a general overview of what we will be working on in the session and how they can achieve the best results. Then move on to warm ups, then straight into speed and agility training, which I make sport specific. Then move on to skills that they would like to improve on, then to skills I think they should improve on. Finally wrapping up with very game like scenarios on: where they should be on the field, how to handle overload situations, and much more.