Dec 11, 2013 | mnicol | 985 views
Steve Simmons Article
I am posting the Article Tim forwarded to our group - it is a great read - Tim said it is not pointed at anyone in particular, but I think we should all take it in and think about the hockey experience for your family and children.
I would add that you take the hockey experience to be part of the times of your life, take the time to interact with other parents, players, coaches, arena staff whom-ever. Thrill in the little victories that we all experience and forget about mistakes. Above all cheer for everyone, not just players on our team.
Keep your stick on the Ice,
Coach Millar
There was about two minutes to play in the playoff game and I was
pacing behind the bench anxiously, barking out whatever instructions
seemed important at that very moment. You watch the game and you
watch the clock in those final seconds, often at the very same time.
Our team was up by a goal, poised to advance to the next round of the
playoffs, when I felt a tug on my jacket. “Ah coach,” one of my little
players said from the bench. “Yea,” I answered, concentrating more on
the game and the clock than on him. “Are there snacks today?”
“Whaaaat?” I barked, somewhat exasperated. “Did anyone bring
snacks today?” “Huh?” I said as I looked back towards the game. “I
hope they didn’t bring apple juice,” the young boy continued. “I don’t
like apple juice.” The moment froze me in all the playoff excitement,
the way all special and meaningful moments should. If somehow, I
could have captured that brief conversation on tape, I would have had
one of those telling sporting moments for parents everywhere, the
kind you need to play for coaches and executives and trainers and
managers and all of us who take youth hockey way too seriously. It
isn’t life or death, as we like to think it is. It isn’t do or die as often as
we pretend it to be. In one tiny moment in one elimination game, kids
hockey was reduced to what it really is about: Apple juice. OK, so it’s
not really apple juice. But what apple juice happens to represent in all
of this. The snack. The routine. The end of game ritual. Kids can win
and lose and not give a second’s thought about either at a certain age,
but don’t forget the post-game drinks. If anything will spoil a good
time that will. You see, it’s all part of the culture of hockey. Not who
wins, not who scores goals, not which team accomplished what on any
given afternoon, but whether Mom and Dad were there, whether their
grandparents were in the stands watching, whether their best friend
was on their team and yes, about what they ate post-game. When you
get involved in hockey, when you truly put your heart into the game
and into the environment and into all that surrounds it, that’s when it’s
at its best. The game is only part of the package. The sense of
belonging, the post game snack, matters also. Minor hockey can
become a social outing for parents. It is a social outing for children. It
should never be about who is going for extra power skating and who is
going straight from Mites to the Maple Leafs but about building that
kind of environment, building memories for kids and parents and
families that they’ll have forever. Sometimes, when I stand around the
arenas I can’t believe the tone of the conversations I hear. The visions
are so shortsighted. The conversations are almost always about today
and who won and who lost and too much about who scored. Not
enough people use the word fun and not enough sell it that way either.
And hard as we try to think like kids, we’re not kids. Hard as we try to
remember what we were like when we were young, our vision is
clouded by adult perspective and logic, something not necessarily
evident with youngsters. Ask any parent whether they would rather
win or lose, and without a doubt they would say win. But ask most
children what they would prefer: playing a regular shift, with power
play time and penalty killing time on a losing team rather than playing
sparingly on a winning team, and the answer has already come out in
two different national studies. Overwhelmingly, kids would rather play
a lot and lose than win a lot while playing little. Ask a parent the score
of a certain game a week later and he or she will know the answer.
The child won’t necessarily know. Like I said, it is about the apple
juice. It is, after all, about the experience.
Often, you can’t know what’s in a kid’s mind. I was coaching a team a
few years ago when I got a call from the goaltender’s father. It was
the day before the house league championship game. The father told
me his eight year old son didn’t want to play anymore. “Anymore after
tomorrow?” I asked. “No,” the father said. “He just doesn’t want to
play anymore.” “Did something happen?” I asked. “He won’t tell me,”
the father said. I hung up the phone and began to wonder how this
happened, and who would play goal the next day, when I decided to
call back. “Can I talk to him?” I asked the father. The young goalie
came on the phone. “I don’t want to play anymore,” he told me. “But
you know what tomorrow is, don’t you? Are you nervous?” “No.” “Then
what ... you can tell me.” “I don’t like it anymore,” he said. “Don’t like
playing goal?” There is a pause on the phone. “They hurt me,” he said.
“Who hurts you?” “The guys,” he said. “What guys?” “Our guys. They
jump on me after the game. It hurts me and scares me.” “Is that it?”
“Yea.” “Do you trust me?” I asked. “Yea.” “What if I told you they
won’t jump on you and hurt you anymore? What if I promised you
that? Would you play then?” “Are you sure?” “I’m sure.” “Then I’ll
play.” And that was the end of our goalie crisis. The kid was scared
and wouldn’t tell his parents. The kid loved playing but didn’t love
being smothered by bodies after victories. You can’t anticipate
anything like that as a coach. You can’t anticipate what’s in their
minds. It’s their game. We have to remember that. They don’t think
like we do or look at the sport like we do. They don’t have to adjust to
us; we have to adjust to them. We have to make certain we’re not in
any way, spoiling their experience. Our experience is important but the
game is for the children. We can say that over and over again, but the
message seems to get lost every year. Lost in too many coaches who
lose perspective and who think nothing of blaming and yelling and
bullying. Lost by parents who think their son or daughter is the next
this or the next that and they are already spending the millions their
little one will be earning by the time they finish hockey in the winter,
3-on-3 in the summer, power skating over school break, special
lessons over March break, pre-tryout camp before the tryouts in May
and a couple weeks of hockey school, just to make certain they don’t
go rusty.
I have asked many NHL players how they grew up in the game. My
favorite answer came from Trevor Linden, who captained more than
one team in his day. He said he played hockey until April and then put
his skates away. He played baseball all summer until the last week of
August. No summer hockey. No special schools. No skating 12 months
a year. “I didn’t even see my skates for about five months a year,” he
said. “I think the kids today are playing way too much hockey, and all
you have to do is look at the development to see it really isn’t
producing any better players. We have to let the kids be kids.” When, I
asked Gary Roberts, did he think he had a future in hockey? “When I
got a call from an agent before the OHL draft,” he said. “Before that, it
was just a game we played.” Do me a favor: Until the agent comes
knocking on your door, and even after that, let’s keep it that way. A
game for kids.
And one reminder, I don’t care what the age: Don’t forget the snacks