Drei Ratschläge an Dein 14jähriges Ich!

Three pieces of advice I’d give myself; first would be to be passionate, love what you do and keep learning and growing as a person. Second piece of advice that I’d give is to be discipline. Probably once you reach a certain point of certain level of whatever you are doing, it comes down to others. There’s people who are pretty good, everybody is pretty good. So it comes down to who is the most dedicated, and who is willing to sacrifice the most for their chosen profession and the last piece of advice I would give is just to live in the moment. 14 years old it seems like you have a lot of your life ahead of you but before you know it, your will be blinking, you will be 29 years old like me.

Was steht auf Deiner Visitenkarte?

My name is Ryan Duncan. I play ice hockey for Red Bull Salzburg and I work in Salzburg, Austria.

Was ist das coolste an Deinem Job?

Yeah, there is a lot of cool parts. For me it’s one of the coolest parts is I get to play a game that I have been playing since I was three years old and somebody is willing to pay me to play a game. So for me it’s not really a job, I wouldn’t classify it a job but it’s just been a great experience. I get to wake up every morning and play and do something that I love to do. And coming from North America, somebody is willing to give me the opportunity to explore the world a little bit and come over to Europe and experience some different cultures and meet lots of different people. So it’s a really cool thing to be a part of it and I feel very fortunate to be a part of that.

Welche Einschränkungen bringt Dein Job mit sich?

I guess some limitations I would say is, sometimes our schedule can be demanding and especially being from North America pulls us from our family and friends and we would miss out on some special moments that we would normally take a part of if we are in a different job. So I can say, yeah, we work 6 days a week instead of 5 days a week, so we don’t necessarily have weekends or set hours available for our family and friends, so I would say that's the biggest limitation.

Worum geht es in Deinem Job?

I play for Red Bull Salzburg and, which is obviously a part of global organization known as Red Bull and our job is to play the game of ice hockey and grow the game of ice hockey throughout Austria and around the region and around the world. Our job as players is to create relationships with our team mates and with the community in general and try to build on that and have as much success as a group as possible and that usually brings us to about 6 days a week of working together and usually one a day off a week. So we are just training probably 3-4 hours a day and probably we would play two or three games a week. The regular season usually begin around the beginning of September, as a team we are asked to be here usually at the end of July, the start of August. So we start our training and we have some preparation games to get us ready. We have been playing in the Champion’s Hockey Leagues, so that been very intense pre-season tournament that actually runs throughout the season but. So we will get going at the end of July, start of august, and that season if all goes well we will run till the end of the end of April. So it’s about 8-9 months throughout the year and then we will have two or three months in the summer time to prepare for the upcoming season. The summer training is, you usually don’t have access as much to ice, so we try to do as much we can in the weight room or in the gym or you are working on your cardiovascular system, trying to get to get stronger and faster and quicker and build yourself that way and ones we get into the season it’s definitely more focused onto the on-ice quality and practice. We are doing everything we can to get ourselves in best shapes, physically and also tactically. So we are trying to build up throughout the summer, throughout the winter and hopefully we will be playing the best hockey and feeling the best in February, March, and April.

Wie sieht Dein Werdegang aus?

I’m originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, that's where I was born, grew up and played hockey there until I was 17 years old. That time I moved to prep school in Minnesota in the United States called Sheddick Saint Mary’s. I played and went to school or two years there, after playing a year of junior hockey and ... British Colombia. I moved to the University of North Dakota, in Grand Forks North Dakota, and went to school and played hockey for four years there and studied Business Management and I ended up with a degree and after that I was fortunate enough to come over and play hockey in Europe and played for EC Red Bull Salzburg in 2009.

Ginge es auch ohne Deinem Werdegang?

Yeah, I think it’s definitely possible with a different background. There’s many different types of hockey players coming from different types of background. So pretty much all you need is an ice sheet, whether it’s indoor or outdoor and a pair of skates, get a hockey stick and then as long as you are willing to be committed and dedicate yourself for many years, I guess, you can end being an ice hockey player.