Young hockey goalies in N.W.T. tried table tennis to improve coordination. It worked
CBC
A group of young hockey goalies traded in their gear for some table tennis paddles to join a research study designed to help them enhance their reflexes.
And for 14-year-old Deacon Tybring, who is one of seven goaltenders to participate, it worked.
"It improved my overall hand-eye coordination quite a bit," said Tybring, who has been playing hockey for three years.
The study was conducted in Hay River last spring for six weeks and was conceived by Thorsten Gohl, the executive director at Table Tennis North in Fort Providence, N.W.T.
The program combines table tennis and hockey to improve hand-eye coordination and reaction time.
Gohl got the idea when he was watching a recreational hockey game and thought his organization could help young goalies improve their game.
"When we pitched the idea to other people that are in hockey, they said, 'Yeah, why not? It's always beneficial to do extra things,'" he said.
The participants aged nine to 15 were coached through a variety of table tennis drills and games for balance and reflexes.
Gohl says it was challenging at first to get going.
"Thinking as a hockey goalie, none of the people from table tennis had any idea what that means, like angling and so on," he said.
Gohl said a fun exercise they tried included playing with one hand and then catching with the other hand.
"That was a great way to increase the reaction time to increase just eye-hand coordination," he said.
The Sport Information Resource Centre, a national organization that shares new sports knowledge through workshops and conferences, evaluated the program.
Early findings showed that on average, participants improved their off-ice hand-eye coordination by 20.5 per cent. Off-ice computer reaction time, on average, increased by 9.7 per cent. On the final test, participants improved their on-ice saves by 15.8 per cent following the table tennis training program.
Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia can all expect between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall this weekend.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.