Friday, November 22nd - 4 hours

Vito Higgins is one busy guy. I knew he was moving into a director's position for goal keeping this year, but I didn't realize he was also the keeper coach at North Idaho College for the guy's team, teaching a class at the same college, organizing keeper trainings and camps, and revamping the college preparation program within the TTNFC club, traveling as an Olympic Development Program coach....and being a husband and dad on top of all of it. He is such a wealth of information and experience after playing at Gonzaga University and coaching at the Division I level, also at Gonzaga.

As I mentioned, one of Vito's roles is being the goal keeping director for the club. Tonight and tomorrow he is putting on a clinic for the younger ages to help them get a taste of what goal keeping is like, basic skills, and become a familiar face with the younger players and their parents. Within the club, they don't push players from specializing in a certain position until later in middle school in order to develop more well rounded players. This usually isn't a big deal for field players, but as anyone knows, being the keeper is a very unique job. In the older ages there is one or two days a week for them to attend keeper training which will take priority over team training, however, at the younger age either nobody wants to be a keeper or the entire team does. Vito is hoping to put on more of these camps in order to teach basic skills to enhance player safety and confidence while also helping them stay competitive when they get older and decide to specialize in goal keeping.