A Message from the CCHL Director of Education – Jonathan Calof, PhD
Director of Education
A greeting to all our players, their families, supporters, teachers and all others interested in and committed to the academic success of our players. The CCHL puts a lot of emphasis on the academic performance of its players and have a variety of personnel and programs in place to help. At the team level, each team has an academic advisor (and a range of academic support programs and policies. Many teams require mandatory school attendance, even for their university and college age players. The league also gives all players access to 24 hour a day seven days per week online tutoring. This service also includes essay checking. We provide regular recognition for those players that combine excellence in the classroom and on the ice through monthly academic players of the month (high school and post-secondary) and at the end of the year academic all-star teams and an academic player of the year award.
The CCHL is proud of how academically successful so many of our players are with numerous academic awards, We are also proud of the large and growing number of CCHL players who have received offers and are playing for Canadian University, college and US NCAA programs. Last year for example we had close to 50 of our players with accepted NCAA (Division 1 and 3), Canadian University and Canadian college offers –
I am assisted in my role of league academic director by Allan Charbonneau also from the University of Ottawa Together, our role is to liaise with teams’ academic advisors who in turn work with the players, and parents to help our players make the most of their Central Hockey League opportunity from an educational perspective. While the coaches do their best to help the players improve on the ice, it the team academic advisors and myself assist the players improve academically off the ice. What does this involve?
- Discussing University and College options
- Assisting in course selections for High School, University or College to make sure they remain eligible to continue playing hockey in university and college.
- Helping to enroll the player in appropriate classes
- Monitoring player academic progress
- Moving players through the maze of rules and regulations at post-secondary educational institutions to help them develop an appropriate course schedule
- Providing on our CCHL website a list of links to both USports and NCAA materials to help maintain academic eligibility.
The CCHL provides the opportunity for players to move on to Canadian University (USports) and NCAA through a host of academic programs but it is up to the players themselves to take advantage of these. My team of team academic advisors and myself are there to support all our players who want to seek to maximize their educational opportunities and move to the next level. The onus is of course on the player to both seek out and accept our help.
I can be reached at calof@telfer.uottawa.ca of our players should be aware of how to contact their teams academic advisor
