May 19th, 2011 Prague ,Czech Republic—The Czech Women’s Development Committee announced the nominations of 16 national team players to attend the first ever International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) High Performance Camp.
The camp with will be held in Bratislava, Slovakia from July 5th to the 12th is a result of an effort to accelerate the growth and quality of the women’s game.
“This has been in the works since last summer when the women’s committee met in Vierumäki, Finland and is something the planners are very excited about”, said Czech Team Development Director, James Craig.
The camp will be attended by some of the best female players in the world with seven or eight players being nominated by the top counties. “We were given allocations for each position, which made the selection process that much more difficult”, said Craig. For the U18 level the team was required to nominate only players born in 1994 and 95.”
“We had to look at a number of factors, but when it got down to final decisions in some positions it came to physical condition and the results of our development team testing”, said Karel Manhart. The camp is being anticipated to be extremely physical, so this was a big consideration for team staff.
“We have a lot of players who sacrificed a tremendous amount personally to participate and it says a lot for their commitment level to our Olympic ambitions”, said Craig.
