The Pursuit of Excellence Hockey Academy combines a very intense comprehensive hockey development program, a school with high academic excellence, participation in a very competitive minor hockey league, and an unparalleled training program for acquiring rock solid life skills and life values.
Hockey players (age 12-17) from around the world come to Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada each September to spend 10 month participating in an unprecedented 1000 hours of hockey development training. The Academy achieves incredible results with players because it has the right blend of hockey development and game experience. (a practice to game ratio of approximately 10 to 1) The Academy fosters the ideal learning environment with no undue pressure placed on players to win, where the coaching staff is extremely positive and encouraging, and where the player's self-esteem is more important than their scoring stats. The discipline, structure, inspiration and role modeling are in place every day to help maximize each player's potential on and off the ice.
Aside from the ice time for games, the training ice time alone is the equivalent of 5 years of minor hockey in 1 year. The program, however, is still very affordable because the parents' money (and the player's time) is directed more toward additional ice time, specialized training such as boxing, sports psychology, nutrition, increased off-ice training, skill sessions, and towards educating players more about the game, rather than money being spent on airfare, hotels, and in restaurants which is normally associated with a long season of traveling to games and tournaments.
The Academy's players are exposed to a lot more than just on-ice and off-ice sessions. On a daily basis, every player, in addition to 2 hours on-ice and 1 hour of off-ice training, has a 1 hour skills session and 1 hour of Pursuit class. So, every day, players are working on either shooting or stickhandling, and they are learning some new aspects of the game. It is not uncommon in our program for players to increase their slap shot speed by 17 mph in the first 3 months, or increase their sprint speed to a puck by 5 mph in the same time period. Imagine what these changes, even in 10 months, would do for your game.
The Director of the Pursuit Academy, David Roy, who has been the skating coach for the Dallas Stars, Vancouver Canucks, Philadelphia Flyers, and other organizations including Canada's Women's Olympic Team, insures that the skating development of the Pursuit players is priority number one. Using the program he has developed over the last 35 years, combined with on-ice video projection, video analysis, VERT computerized resistance training, and with some aspect of skating worked on each day, the transformation in the players' speed, quickness, agility, and skating efficiency is incredible.
Of equal importance to David and the Pursuit Academy, is the development of every player's character and values. Through traveling to Mexico to build houses for the poor, serving food to people off the street at the Gospel Mission, sponsoring children from Third World countries and through many other opportunities, the Pursuit players experience humility, gratitude, servant leadership, and the importance of having a faith in God.
When you add to all of this, the fact that our players participate on a Midget AAA, Bantam AAA, or Bantam AA team in a very competitive minor hockey league, it is no wonder we continually receive emails from parents and players stating that the Pursuit has changed their future in hockey and changed their lives. View testimonials.