You were the general secretary for nearly two decades, you played a major part in the development in the sport, what was the biggest success that you were a part of?
It is always great to host a world championships however the greatest success was having the Canadian national team to play in Hungary in 2004. They played in Fehérvár in February, the game had just about ended when we had signed a contract for the two countries to play each other again a year later in April before the A-Pool World Championships. There was a sold out crowd in the László Papp Sports Arena as Hungary played a team that was filled with NHL stars. This was personally exciting for me.
What was the reason why you changed positions?
There are multiple reasons for the change. With the leadership in the federation changing naturally the work and the responsibilities were also changed as new people were brought in. The federation has changed to being run like a company in the meantime. The general secretary position has changed as well, I have a degree in economics however I know I am not a money person. The new general secretary is better equipped to do this, from this point Levente Sipos is a qualified person for this. As a young kid he did play some organized hockey so he is not a stranger to this sport.
How much of your previous responsibilities do you still have in your new position?
The other side of my old position was putting together reports of meetings that were held, these were not challenging but started to become a drag for me. I prefer to work on the side of sports diplomacy and making ice hockey popular. Inviting mentor coaches, negotiating with other federations in an effort to have teams come to Hungary. In my new position I will only really need to concentrate on this. Which is really what I enjoying the most.
This new position will not be completely different for you?
As technical vice president I will be the chairman of the technical committee. We will be covering the league both the men's and women's senior team and the development programs. We have the highest educated former players and coaches on this committee making decisions about the top level of hockey in this country. We come up with any recommendations we have for the federation. I will also the international director where I will be staying in contact with both the IIHF as well as the other federations around the world. We have also started to plan the new ice rink that we hope to have soon and of course spreading the popularity of the sport.
How do you plan on bringing in more kids to the sport?
Levente Szuper has done presentations and demo practices which have become popular where ever we have held them all throughout the country. We would also like to support new clubs the best we can with equipment for example.
The youth program has reached a high level as both the U18 and U20 national teams are in the top 16 teams in the world, how can we continue this success?
We can climb the mountain but it is hard to actually stay there. We need to put more work into the project and we need even more clubs and more kids playing hockey. We need to have more competitive games, not just in the Austrian leagues but also in the Hungarian ones as well. An important step in the process I think is the mentor coaching program. This is more for the smaller clubs where they might not have the funding to have experienced coaches or a coaching staff. With the mentor coaching program these coaches could help and support the coaches that are working with the smaller clubs. Hopefully clubs like Zalaegerszeg, Kaposvár and Szombathely will be able to close the gap between themselves and the top clubs. There has been quality work being done around the national team and youth programs as well.
You will be in your new position for four years, what would you be satisfied with in this time span?
I would be happy if every county capital city would have a proper sized covered hockey rink, right now we still have ten more cities to get to. Some of these large cities are Eger, Szolnok and Kecskemét. I think it is important that each of these cities would provide a quality place to play top flight hockey. I would be happy if the senior national team would take the next step which would be to move up and down between the A-Pool and the Division 1/A group. We have not bid to host the A-Pool World Championships but it looks like we can start to do this again. We could co-host with either Vienna, Bratislava or Ljubljana. Vienna would be great as two beautiful cities would be co-hosting, which are both very close to each other. It would be incredible if in ten years Hungary is playing in the A-Pool in Budapest.
