This interview took place in an unusual setting: the changing rooms of the Cornèr Arena, the ice stadium where the Hockey Club Lugano is based. But the protagonists are not the champions of the first team, but rather some boys from the Youth Section preparing for their daily training. While I wait for them, I take the opportunity to exchange a few words with the lawyer. Massimo Pedrazzini, President of the Foundation HC Lugano Academy and member of the management team of the Lugano Hockey Club Association, and with Alessandro Chiesa, former HCL player and now Head Coach of the U15-Top and U15-Elite youth teams.
We ask why the work that the Youth Section carries out every year with over 400 young people from all over Ticino is so important.
«The answer is quite simple» the lawyer tells us. Pedrazzini. «Some of them, at the end of a sporting and personal training course, will undertake a professional career in the world of hockey, going on to play in the National League and perhaps some will even become a champion, obviously I hope in the ranks of the HCL. But everyone, this is our aim and our ambition, will be good citizens, having shared for a significant number of years a whole series of values and behaviors that are the basis of our civil life. Furthermore, they will have had fun in a healthy, cheerful environment, where it is easy to develop lasting friendships with teammates and coaches. Finally, everyone will take with them an indelible memory of this extraordinary experience."
«If you listen to the voices that come from the locker room where they are changing – intervenes Head Coach Alessandro Chiesa – it is possible to have an immediate perception of the climate in which we are used to working. Within the team we try to create a situation in which each boy can best express his personality and give space to his emotions. But in a few minutes they will enter the track and immediately the boys, in addition to being absolutely punctual regarding the start of training, will show all their concentration, respect for the instructions coming from the coaches, and their determination to try and try the game plans again and again. ».
In fact, punctuality is a topic that all kids focus on. Leno Näser, 14 years old, center forward, in the Youth Section since he was 3, underlines that «the coaches are very careful that we show up on the training ground on time. If we arrive late they will immediately point it out to us and if it happens again they will warn us. But we can talk to them, they listen to us and help us solve any problems."
Respect for the rules seems to be an element internalized by all the kids, as Nico Canuti, 14 years old, right winger, who attended the hockey school from an early age and then climbed the different categories of the Youth Section, tells me, but in the last year he had to be absent from training for a few months due to a broken wrist, and I asked him what he learned most from his stay in the team: «I learned to be together with the other guys, we are all friends, we we also see outside of training sessions. But everyone also wants to be the best to be chosen and play in the championship matches. In the locker room they taught us respect towards our teammates and all people and also attention to the care of materials." To confirm his education and the respect with which he treats people, he greets me by shaking my hand.
I ask the kids how they manage to combine study and sporting activities and they all reply that in general it is not a problem also because they attend the Cannobio School, which is particularly careful in considering the needs of students involved in sporting activities. «Of course – says Didier Bracher, born in 2010, of Bernese origin, with a goalkeeper role, amused – there is quite little free time left between school and training, you always have to run between one commitment and another. But that's fine with me. Then, in addition to training with the other teammates, on Monday morning I have training reserved exclusively for goalkeepers."
Another issue we addressed with the kids was regarding their parents' participation in their sporting activity. Everyone told us that it is above all fathers who follow and accompany their children both when they play at the Cornèr Arena and away. Thus, for example, the center forward Velerio Manz, 14 years old, proudly confirms to me that «my parents have always been close to my sporting commitment, but the greatest encouragement comes above all from the spirit that exists in the team, from feeling united, from the desire to “never give up”».
Alessandro Chiesa underlines how the task of a coach to encourage the growth process of a boy is precisely to «achieve a balance between technical preparation and the search for performance, but at the same time guarantee the most harmonious psychological and emotional development of the boy, preserving it where possible from all external pressures, including family ones, thanks above all to a stimulating, serene environment, aware of the importance of commitment and the pleasure of knowing how to have fun playing and winning".
The meeting with the boys is over, they leave the locker room and reach the track to start training. I observe them for some time from the stands and I can't help but notice the great concentration with which they follow the coaches' instructions. The youthful shouts and shouts remained in the locker room, now we get serious, we play for HC Lugano!
