No GK coach? No problem!

It is a Tuesday night and the session is humming. Your outfield players are deep in a possession game at the far end of the pitch, sticks clicking, voices going. And there, on her own in the goal, is your keeper. She has had two touches in twenty minutes. When the finishing drill finally comes round, four players queue up to drive balls at her from the top of the circle. Nobody walked over to explain the objective. Nobody asked her what she saw. And on Saturday, you will ask that same young player to organise your whole defence under a penalty corner.

If that scene stings a little, you are in good company, and it does not make you a bad coach. Most field hockey coaches never played in goal. There is usually no specialist keeper coach on the staff, so goalkeeping quietly gets filed under someone else's department. As Javi Telechea (ARG) wrote earlier, goalkeepers are the only players who are truly different: they dress differently, they can kick the ball, and too often, in Telechea's words, we as coaches do not help them integrate either.

Here is the reassuring part. Developing a junior keeper without a specialist on the touchline is not about teaching elite dives or breaking down the perfect aerial save. It is about a handful of habits any thoughtful coach can build into a normal session. This piece pulls together what Javi Telechea, Mili Arrotea, and Dutch Olympian goalie Pirmin Blaak have shared with us, and turns it into something you can actually run this week.

Before any technical fix, the cheapest and most powerful thing you can do costs nothing. Stop leaving the keeper on an island. Telechea makes this the heart of the argument: so much of a keeper's development is built through small details of belonging. Wait until your keeper is inside the circle before you start the talk. Include them when you explain the objective of a drill. Ask their opinion. During the session, talk to them, a correction, a question, even a word of encouragement, so they know you are watching them as closely as anyone else.

For young keepers especially, these early years are less about technical correction than about ignition: making the role fun and making the player feel they belong in it. A keeper who feels part of the group keeps showing up for the role. A keeper left in the cold for a season quietly decides goalkeeping is a punishment. And there is a hard logic here that Telechea names directly: how can we expect leadership on Saturday from someone we leave on the sidelines all week?

It is easy to build a session around your outfield players and then drop the keeper in at the end to face shots. Telechea offers three simple questions to ask of every drill while you are still planning:

There is a single idea sitting underneath all three questions. Learning happens in the gap that is hard enough to stretch a keeper but not so hard that they thrash. Too easy bores them, genuinely dangerous makes them flinch, so plan for the version of every drill that makes them reach.

When you do work on technique, resist the urge to chase the spectacular. Pirmin Blaak is blunt about where the value sits: the single most important thing in goalkeeping is standing still in a correct base position. It sounds almost too simple, but every save, every step, every decision starts from it. For a coach who never kept goal, that is liberating, because you can absolutely coach a base. Are the hands at mid-height, neither so high they give away the low ball nor so low they surrender the high one? Is the weight forward and balanced, ready to move either way? You can see that from the halfway line.

Blaak's mental model is to treat the basics as a toolkit the keeper unpacks and sharpens regularly, ideally a short block every week, rather than something covered once in pre-season and forgotten. In his own seasonal approach the focus always stays on the basics and timing, with pressure and the special techniques added only later. There is a reason to be this repetitive. Skills wire in through correct repetition, and grooved habits are stubborn, so build the reliable, repeatable trunk of fundamentals first and let the flashy branches come later.

Two more Blaak principles make life easier for the non-specialist:

Underneath all of this sits the junior-development frame Arrotea lays out: think of the keeper as carrying a four-part toolbox of technical, tactical, physical and mental tools, and match what you ask to where they are. Younger keepers, around U14, are in an explore phase where fun and broad experience matter most. A little older, around U16, they begin to develop and refine. And keep taking them out of the goal now and then, into outfield drills and even simple kicking, so they grow as hockey players, not just as shot-blockers.

Here is where it all comes together, and where a junior keeper becomes genuinely valuable to your team. Blaak is clear that the keeper has the best view on the pitch and should be coaching the defence in front of them, giving the back line security and information. Arrotea takes the same idea into the U18 stage: the keeper is not a shot-stopper who happens to talk, they are the organiser of the defence who also happens to make saves.

The catch, as Telechea says plainly, is that leadership does not appear by magic on the weekend. It is trained during the week. If we never give the keeper a structured chance to organise in training, we have no right to expect a commanding voice on Saturday. So build it in. Give the keeper a clear communication objective even in a drill where they barely touch the ball: they are the only player allowed to speak, they call who is free, they decide when a defender steps. Keep the vocabulary short and repeatable, a name plus a location plus an instruction, something like "Tom, ball side, step now", and ask the defenders to act only on the keeper's voice.

Two things help a young keeper find that voice. First, get out of the way. Players only learn to lead when the coach stops being the single source of every instruction, so deliberately go quiet and let the keeper run the back line, even when they get it wrong. Second, make the talk two-way. As Blaak suggests, a coach should grab the keeper and ask for their opinion, so end defensive reps by asking the keeper what they saw and what they want from their defenders next time. The answer they generate themselves sticks far better than the one you hand them.

Objective. Build a calm, repeatable base position and confident stepping out, using simple equipment and realistic distances. No specialist knowledge required from the coach.

Setup. Keeper in goal. You, or a rotating player, with a small supply of balls plus a few tennis balls, working from around the penalty spot rather than the top of the circle. Mark the keeper's starting line with a cone or a length of rope so they have a reference for their base.

Progressions.

What to look for. Hands neither too high nor too low. The keeper genuinely still and balanced before each ball rather than drifting. A calm reset to base after every save. Stop the drill the instant the base collapses, exactly as you would freeze play to fix a forward's first touch, and the moment they get one right, say so on the spot and then add a little more so the success becomes the springboard. Above all, do not unload twenty minutes of close-range hitting as a warm-up. That load does not exist in a real match, and all it builds is a flinch.

Objective. Train the keeper to lead and organise the players in front of them, so the commanding voice you want on Saturday is actually built midweek.

Setup. A small-sided defensive picture inside the circle, for example two defenders against three attackers, with the keeper in goal. Keep the numbers tilted against the defence so there is always something to organise.

Progressions.

What to look for. An early, clear voice rather than silence under pressure. Specific calls, not just noise. Defenders who actually respond to the keeper. If your keeper goes quiet, pause, reset, and give them one simple phrase to own before going again. Confidence here is built one small success at a time, so catch them doing it well and say so.