Egner’s Drive Leads Him to India for High-Performance Coaching Course

Dartmouth head field hockey coach Mark Egner doesn't just talk the talk.

He walks the walk.

"Coming out of our season, one of the things we asked the girls to do was push themselves and make sure they were doing everything they could to improve, so from my perspective, not doing that as a coach would have been hypocritical," he said. "It was really important to make the effort to grow.

"That's what drove me to go to India [for an FIH high-performance coaching course]."

The FIH, which is the International Hockey Federation, has six levels of coaching certification and this was level five.

"I wanted to get myself out of my comfort zone," said Egner. "I wanted to put myself in a space where I wasn't the most experienced coach in the room. and learn from some of those other people."

In January, around 20 coaches came from all over the world to the Men's FIH Hockey World Cup, which took place in Bhubaneswar, India.

"We spent a week doing a lot of work on developing ourselves as coaches," said Egner. "We had tasks where we would watch games at the World Cup and have particular things to look out for and present on. Before we flew out, we had to write a research paper on a particular topic related to the sport of field hockey. Then, we had to present what we had found to the other participants."
Mark Egner Story

Egner's topic was the principles of attacking play in the midfield.

What were the principles of play that allow midfielders to be successful at the international level?

"In my preparation, I watched the semifinals and the final of the 2020 Olympics, the Tokyo games, and looked specifically at the two teams who competed in the final (Argentina and the Netherlands)," said Egner. "I looked at the differences and similarities, how their midfielders played when their team had the ball and how that helped their teams position themselves to be successful.

"Some of the things that really stood out were how they made space for themselves, how they received to inform their ability to attack and how they supported the player who was on-ball."

Egner presented his findings to the other coaches.

"We had two coaches from South Africa, one of whom just got appointed as the head coach of Canada's men's team," he said. "We had one coach from England, who was just announced as the assistant coach of the Scottish women's team. We had three coaches from the Netherlands, one of whom is the under-21 coach for the Dutch men's team and just coached his club team to its national championship."

The list goes on, including some coaches from and/or with experience from host India, Germany, New Zealand, Japan and the United States.

"There were two others from the NCAA," said Egner. "One was Tim Broenink, who was at Syracuse last year, along with Rutger Wiese, who used to be the United States men's head coach [and has NCAA Division I coaching experience]."

Egner was surrounded by people who understand the game at a very high level. He was one of those people as well, influencing those around him in his time in India.
Mark Egner Story

"As part of the program, we also worked with some of the talented youth players in the area we were in," he said.

The whole trip, and everything it entailed, was very powerful.

"We were coaching the youth with the help of some of the Indian coaches; we had to try to coach in English and have it translated," he said. "That opportunity to understand how difficult it is to coach in a new language is pretty powerful. Every day, there were different guest presenters who spoke to us. One was Adam Commens, the performance director for Belgian hockey. One was Max Caldas who is a Spanish men's team coach."

The course led to plenty of continued networking over the ensuing weeks and months.
Mark Egner Story Hanging out in Holland

"I was later in Holland watching the FIH pro league games on the women's side and met up with several of the coaches who were in the course (see photo)," said Egner. "The community we've developed has been really, really special. It has been very supportive; we challenge each other and have had some zoom calls where we've gotten together and talked about some things we've wanted to do on our own teams."

Speaking of his own team, Egner took a lot of what he learned into the Big Green's spring season… and the program's international trip of their own in March to Barcelona, Spain.

"I got the opportunity to see some of the emerging trends up close and personal," he said. "Things like how teams are choosing to attack using different techniques, along with more tactical aspects, like how they were choosing to defend in different moments. That really drew my attention to how can we expand our repertoire of different ways to do things.

"We got the team together while we were in Spain and started to work to implement some of those new strategies together," Egner continued. "And that was some of the focus for us over the spring, embedding those during our non-championship segment and making sure we understand them to a degree that our incoming freshmen are going to be able to get on pace with them pretty quickly."

The course itself put Egner outside his comfort zone, as he's working to become level five certified, which is pretty rare at the NCAA level.

"The course is still ongoing for a year," he said. "There are some online pieces we have to do, sessions we have to take care of, so it's not finished by any stretch of the imagination. I haven't achieved the certification yet.

"To gain entrance to the course, I needed the backing of USA Field Hockey so they had to approve that I was ready to take the course on, and I had to apply and gain acceptance," Egner continued. "I was encouraged to apply by one of my friends, who was also a participant in the course."

It has been a worthwhile experience for Egner in his individual growth, which translates to the Dartmouth field hockey student-athletes.

And that's what it's all about.