1. The goal: playing hockey successfully together with fun

Children and teenagers should be able to play in the Frankfurt sports club Sachsenhausen Forsthausstraße e.V. ("SAFO") to practice hockey with fun and joy in the community. We are convinced that we can best achieve this if we create a tolerant, family-like climate for everyone in our club ("SAFO Family") and at the same time think and act in terms of competitive sports.

Hockey is a team sport that provides fun, exercise and socialising for children and young people. In addition to physical-sport and coordination training, the children and young people learn and develop appropriate social behaviour and togetherness in the group. This promotes personality development, strengthens self-confidence and conveys the idea of fair play. All these are valuable experiences that go far beyond the purely sporting field and are important to us in our "SAFO family".

In terms of sports, we offer all children and young people an age-appropriate general sports and hockey-specific education, whereby we generally follow a performance-oriented, sports-oriented approach. Our offer therefore requires a high level of commitment on the part of the children and also the support of the parents for the sport.

In addition to the performance-oriented teams and the performance-oriented team classification from the U10 level upwards, we as a club also want to offer a home to leisure-oriented players. In accordance with their inclination and commitment to the sport, as many young people as possible should be introduced and integrated into the various youth and adult teams of the club and find a place in our SAFO family.

2. Who has to take part to reach the goal?

Team spirit is not only important on the hockey field, but also in the whole environment of a team and the entire club, because the planning and implementation of training and match operations require a great deal of effort and the commitment of everyone involved.

With its infrastructure, the club provides the basis for all sporting success. In addition to the care and maintenance of the facilities, ensuring a sufficient number of qualified coaches and co-trainers per team and the training of the coaches and support staff, the club ensures with tournaments, events and other social and community activities that all children, young people and their parents feel safe and valued in our "SAFO family".

The sports management and the coaches are responsible for the sports education and the sports goals, they take care of the implementation of the sports concept and support each player according to his individual possibilities. The coaches set up the teams and supervise them during the match days. They are role models for the players and maintain a positive and fair relationship with players, opponents and referees (see SAFO Hockey Mission Statement (only in german)).

Team managers (coaches) are an important link between the teams, the other parents, the coaches and the club. Their task is in particular to relieve the coaches of administrative and organisational tasks so that they can concentrate on their sporting duties. A good cooperation between coach and team manager and the involvement of all parents ensures a positive and performance-enhancing environment.

The parents promote the hockey sport of their children to the best of their ability. Parents respect the division of labour between coach and support staff, and maintain a positive and fair relationship with players, opponents and referees (see SAFO Hockey Mission Statement (only in german)). In addition, there is even an active parents' hockey team at SAFO.

The club, coaches and trainers are dependent on the commitment and support of the children, young people and their legal guardians. At the same time we would like to be an important social and societal anchor point for the children and young people beyond the purely sporting activities, where age-spanning friendships can be made and new contacts made. Many of our players already have parents and grandparents who played hockey or tennis with us and who consider their current and former friends and teammates to be a second "club" family. Therefore, the commitment to the club beyond the youth age is the declared goal of our "Family Club".

However, SAFO does not only support young people as "players"; if possible, we advertise an FSJ position every year and train teenagers and young adults to become sports and fitness professionals, in order to contribute to the social and community life in our city and our district. Furthermore, we cooperate with secondary schools, primary schools and day-care centres in order to support the sporting education of the children, but also to make the children and their parents aware of our sporting activities.

3. So how do we basically achieve our common sporting goal?

Starting with the age group Girls/Boys C (U10), the teams are divided into more powerful and somewhat weaker or not yet so experienced players in order to avoid over- or underchallenge of the children. This division is not to be understood as a final decision. Depending on the training commitment and personal development of the youngsters, a change from one performance group to another is always possible.

Often young people improve sustainably through continuous playing practice in a slightly lower performance group, so that they are divided into the higher performance group in the next age group. For this reason we try to have as many children as possible participate in the game by registering several teams in different performance groups. This is very complex in organisational terms and is therefore often not implemented by other clubs or cannot be implemented due to the lack of coaching and childcare capacities. However, we consider this concept essential in order to implement our understanding of the promotion of all young people, but also to exemplify our ideas of fairness and equal treatment.

The respective trainer (in consultation with the sports management) is solely responsible for the training contents and the division of the teams. These coaches will also determine whether - based on the current level of performance - participation in the championship round seems sensible or whether it makes more sense to play in the "Hessenpokal" for the time being and will coordinate this with the team manager (supervisor) of the respective team. Priority will be given to our teams in the "Championship" category.

4. And what does that look like in concrete terms?

The basic training contents are independent of the current team classification. Our aim is to offer all children and young people high-quality training. Every team therefore has at least one qualified head coach. This is usually supported by at least one co-trainer and additional assistant coaches (depending on the number of children). The coaches usually come from the active sector and the higher youth teams, which in turn promotes the identification of the children and young people with the club and makes the young coaches and the younger players in turn and beyond their team a large "SAFO team".

SAFO has also established a mandatory internal and external training and development program for all coaches, which ensures a continuous improvement in the quality of training and also constantly challenges the coaches.

SAFO organises its own and, if necessary, additional external hockey camps for our children and young people (field/ indoor) three times a year (Easter/summer/autumn).

Furthermore, we offer an age- and team-spanning technique training (indoor season) as well as an age- and team-spanning goalkeeper training (indoor and field season) and inspire children and young people to become goalkeepers.

We teach the following training contents in individual age groups (see german article for more information).

Below the D children's area (3 - 5 years), the playful and athletic training as well as the introduction to tennis and hockey takes place within the Heidelberg Ball School.

Here the children learn the ABCs of playing, the development of which is based on many years of sports science research by Prof. Dr. Klaus Roth. The focus is on a versatile and playfully guided teaching of general, age-appropriate and cross-sports skills. In fun competitions, the children are introduced to the world of sports games in games and exercises with hand, foot and racket, following the example of street play culture.

5. Umpires are also part of the SAFO family

In our opinion, the training of young referees is part of successful youth work. We therefore train our own junior referees and provide them with continuous training. From the B children's area (U12) onwards, attendance of refereeing courses and the acquisition of the youth refereeing licence are obligatory.

6. Contact persons

The concerns of all members and especially of all children and young people are important to us. The departmental management, the members of the hockey committee as well as our full-time coaches and sports directors are always available as contact persons. You can find the contact details on our homepage www.sportclub-safo.de.

We wish you a lot of fun and success in our SAFO family.

Hockey department

Sebastian Wölfing
Michael Hörnig
Daniel von Bernstorff
Tanja Schmidt-Peccolo