07/11/25
COACHING IS COMMUNICATION.
A 1998 graduate of Avon Old Farms School, a boarding school for boys located in Avon, Connecticut, Geoff Barlow played his high school hockey for the Winged Beavers before moving to NCAA D3 at Hobart College, where he majored in economics. Following college graduation, he returned to Avon, spending twelve years in the school’s admissions department before becoming Director of Athletics eleven years ago. Also an assistant coach with Avon’s highly-ranked varsity hockey club, Geoff recently sat down with us to talk about how PowerPlayer is helping improve coach to player communication, and making the job of coaching a little easier.
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What’s your personal coaching philosophy? How do you approach teaching kids to play this sport? ​First, I love being an assistant coach—it kind of fits my personality! I'm pretty laid back, and I try to connect with the kids. That's important, especially with today's athletes, to be able to find common ground with them, to know what they're looking for, and what they respond to. So I'd say job one for me is to connect with players. As a coaching staff, if you don't have that, it can make things really challenging.
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You’re obviously a believer in communication and feedback from coaches to players. Why does that matter to you personally, and to the program? ​In order to know which way to help people move forward, you have to know how people are feeling, and where everyone's at. So I make it a personal goal to check in with each kid every day—whether it be about a game or a practice we just had, or family life, or classes, or whatever—to make that connection. Communication is critical, especially with today's kids. They don't just want to know what they need to do, they want to know why they should do it. So we’re honest with them. It's not always news that they want to hear—life’s not always going to go the way they want—but I think ultimately they respect the coaching staff for being upfront. Any time we make lineup changes, or we think a kid is struggling a little bit, we'll have a conversation. Like I said, that can be tough for them sometimes, but it’s certainly a good life lesson long term. We want them to know where they stand and what the thought process is behind any decisions we're making.
The worst thing a coach can do is leave a player guessing. I know that's not how I want to be treated, and I'm 45 years old. For teenagers already facing challenges with social media, performance anxiety, and various pressures, adding uncertainty can be particularly troubling.
As a high school and a boarding school, we’re a big part of their development process. They come here at age fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and sometimes a little bit older, and many of them have the goal to play college hockey. And they're looking for us to help them. We've been really successful in that as a program, so we make sure we're doing what we can to move them along in that process.
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How did you find PowerPlayer, and how does it fit into the Avon Old Farms approach? ​We found PowerPlayer through The Coaches Site. It's our first year on the app, but PowerPlayer’s been really great for us, and I think we're just scratching the surface with it. It's definitely an easy way to communicate. It gets everybody on the same page, which has been great. And honestly I think it eliminates some of the excuses teenage boys can come up with. “I didn't hear you. I didn't see it. I wasn't sure. I didn't know what time film or practice was.” It’s no secret teenage boys can be a little absent minded at times, and they have a lot on their plates, so whenever we've got to make a change to our schedule or whatever, it's right there on the app. That way we all know—from the coaching staff to the players to the team managers—what time things are happening, and what our schedule is for the day or the week or month.
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What's the player reaction to PowerPlayer? ​ They like it. In the past, every day our coach would send an email. But with teenage kids, well, they're not always checking emails. I think they probably get way too many, and as a consequence they ignore most of them. It's just not an effective way to communicate, but PowerPlayer puts team communication right in front of them. Hockey’s important to them. They all have their phones on them, and they know when they get a notification from PowerPlayer, that it's something they need to pay attention to.
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What does PowerPlayer do for you as coaches? ​It just simplifies things, and like I said, I think we're still learning how to use it. We've talked about adding more polling. I can see us getting to almost a daily poll, like how was practice today? How are you feeling? That kind of thing. So that as we plan our workouts and practices, we've got some feedback from them on where they're at personally. There are things thrown at them here at boarding school that are probably amplified because they can't get out of here. They're here all the time. School is challenging, our days are long, and we ask a lot of them. So as we look ahead, being able to learn about how they’re dealing with all of those things outside of hockey is really important when it comes to what we’re trying to help them with in hockey.
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What do you think is the biggest impact of better communication in coaching? ​It’s pretty simple. The better you can communicate, the better you can coach. If you have an understanding of your players, and your players have an understanding of what you're looking for, and where they need to improve or what they need to do to be more successful, the better they're going to respond to your coaching, and the more they're going to develop and progress. ​​​​​​
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Avon Old Farms players who have gone on to professional careers include:​
Cam Atkinson '08 - NHL
Nick Bonino '07 - NHL / 2 time Stanley Cup champion
Jeff Hamilton '96 - NHL
Chris Higgins '01 - NHL
Spencer Knight - NHL / 1 time Stanley Cup champion
Brian Leetch '86 - NHL / 1 time Stanley Cup champion
Jonathan Quick '05 - NHL / 3 time Stanley Cup champion
Trevor Zegras / NHL​
