About us
Golden Cobras Hockey Academy
Established in January 2024, Golden Cobras is an international hockey academy and team franchise based in Jakarta, Indonesia. The academy offers an extensive development program targeted for youth hockey players in Southeast Asia.
The program is composed of group practices, off-ice fitness training, video coaching, hockey camps, and participation in various international tournaments. We strive to build young hockey leaders of the world and to thrive on the international stage.
Leadership
Led by Coaches Who Have Built National Team Programs
Golden Cobras' program is led by Hungarian Head Coach Kristof Kovago, a decorated IIHF coach, with decades of experience building the foundations of national team programs around the world: South Africa (2002), Chinese Taipei (2007), United Arab Emirates (2015), Malaysia (2016), Thailand (2019), and Qatar (2020).
Assisting Kristof is the Program Director and Co-Founder of Golden Cobras Hockey Academy, Brandon Hsiao from Taiwan, who was a former collegiate hockey player for UCLA and national team player for Team Chinese Taipei (Taiwan). Brandon currently resides in Indonesia and holds a managerial position in Indonesia's Ice Hockey Federation (Federasi Hoki Es Indonesia), while actively serving as the Assistant Coach of Indonesia's Men's National Team.
Our goals
Three Things We Are Working Towards
Personal Development
Our goal is to train players to learn and improve the fundamental skills of hockey, to develop hockey sense, to familiarize with teamwork, and to gain international game experience. But above all, our players learn the right hockey culture, build character, and cultivate leadership attributes.
We want our members to become great people who happen to play ice hockey. Hockey is our tool to teach life lessons, so that our players grow into influential people in whatever career they pursue. We strive to empower our athletes to become somebody they never knew they could become.
Building the Next Generation
Our goal is to build generations of young ice hockey players who will represent their respective national teams in the World Championships and Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, and possibly advance to collegiate or professional/semi-professional hockey in North America.
It starts with recruitment. We continue to welcome new players and build a pipeline that will transition Indonesia into a competitive, multi-club hockey nation.
Our goal is to also train the next generation of coaching and management staff in a hockey organization.
International Presence and Friendship
Hockey is a global community, and we want Golden Cobras to be a name that is known and respected on the international stage, a powerhouse of ice hockey in the Southeast Asia region.
We believe our COBRA Development Model is the most suitable path for hockey development in Southeast Asia, where ice time is limited. That is why we want to extend our services beyond Indonesia and help our neighboring nations develop the game, building friendships across borders along the way.
Core values
THRIVED
Seven values we coach on and off the ice.
- TTeam
- HHumility
- RRespect
- IIntegrity
- VVersatility
- EExcellence
- DDiscipline
Meet the coaches
Coached by National Team Players and Staff
Select a coach to read their background.
Cobra development model
Built for Countries Where Ice Time Is Scarce
Head Coach Kristof Kovago brings decades of hockey development experience and expertise to Golden Cobras, especially having traveled around the world, specifically in Asia, to build the national team foundations of those countries.
Remarkably, all of those countries have one thing in common: ice time is very limited and often very costly. The consequences are that youth players lack competitive games and group training on the full ice. To compensate for the lack of ice time, players are often then forced to heavily rely on small-area private and/or semi-private lessons, which in many cases have led to individualistic habits and deviations from a team play mindset.
The COBRA Development Model (CDM) is tailored towards hockey development specifically in developing nations that lack ice resources. CDM incorporates many training and education methods that complement on-ice hockey development.
This includes off-ice strength and conditioning training, video coaching, and inline or floor hockey group practices (with just running shoes, sticks, and pucks). The rationale is that, to optimize the development of youth ice hockey players in a learning environment with limited availability of ice, CDM must use unconventional ways to help develop the players' hockey sense, understanding of team positioning, and familiarization with hockey systems. That's the only way we can come close to competing with other youth hockey programs that have abundant ice resources.
The CDM prioritizes full-ice group practices while also incorporating off-ice training and video coaching. A monumental part of the model are also hockey camps and participation in various international tournaments in Asia.
Start here: BX Skating AcademyLearn to Skate and Learn to Play programs, in partnership with Golden Cobras Hockey Academy: private and semi-private lessons with a hockey coach. From there, players move into the six parts of the Golden Cobras program (U10, U12, U14, U16 and U18).
Stages of development
Four Stages, from a First Skate to the National Team
1. Recruitment Learn to Skate and Learn to Play
The first stage of development is Recruitment, where skaters have a lot of fun learning to skate and learning to play with sticks and pucks. Recruitment programs are available in all ice rinks and through different private hockey clubs or academies in Indonesia.
Specifically for Golden Cobras, based in Jakarta, we strategically partner with BX Skating Academy in BX Rink, Bintaro, to offer the best Learn to Skate and Learn to Play program for players of all levels. We ensure that players develop a strong foundation of basic skating through a fun yet complete training curriculum so that they can transition into more advanced hockey training with confidence.
2. Youth Development U10, U12 and U14
The second stage of development is Youth development, specifically for U10, U12, and U14 age groups. This stage is where Golden Cobras Hockey Academy is most invested as we believe the extent of Youth development would fundamentally dictate the future pathway of each player. In this stage of development, players learn all the fundamental skills of hockey, develop hockey sense, familiarize with teamwork, gain international game experience, and cultivate leadership attributes, values, and character.
3. Junior Development U16 and U18
After U10/U12/U14 Youth development, players will transition to U16/U18 Junior development which is special because players are now age-eligible to represent Indonesia's national team (15 years-old). In this stage of development, we start to incorporate the training philosophy and periodization of Indonesia's national team program. In addition to encouraging U16/U18 players to develop through the Federation's national team program, Golden Cobras primarily develops players of this category via participation in various international competitions in Asia.
4. National Team Development U18, U20 and Men's Team
The last stage of development is National Team development. The goal of Golden Cobras Hockey Academy is to build generations of young ice hockey players who will represent their respective national teams in the World Championships and Southeast Asian (SEA) Games. At this level, we hope that players would also be skilled enough to advance to collegiate or professional/semi-professional hockey in North America.
Train Locally. Compete Internationally.
Whether your player is on skates for the first time or ready for a first game, there is a place to start.