Hockey—Part I: A daughter’s reaffirming question

Coaching has been the routine for most of my Novembers since returning to Northern Wisconsin, but this year I bring a higher level of appreciation. Not that other years have been bad, but this year has a new variable—I’m also coaching my daughter’s local youth team, and she’s allowing me to view the game through a slightly different lens and in the process reaffirming my support of USA Hockey.

A simple question she asked me today got me thinking about the game as we teach it.

USA Hockey is the official organization of ice hockey in America, founded in 1936. Their mission is “to promote the growth of hockey in America and provide the best possible experience for all participants by encouraging, developing, advancing and administering the sport” (www.usahockey.com).

Membership is currently about 600,000. Among the services provided are coaching education programs and curriculums. They are the governing body of teams of six-year-olds on one end to the men’s and women’s Olympic teams on the other.

In 1998 I was living in River Falls and in one of my graduate classes I read a book called The Hurried Child. It made a strong impression on me. It was a critique of how and why our modern culture dresses children up to look and act like little adults, pushing them through childhood faster and faster—all in an effort to acquire skills or status better, faster and more efficiently. This process applies to reading as well as the ability to make a cross ice pass.

I re-read the book this summer. Parts of it read like the pages out of a Bible Belt publication decrying rock-n-roll, while other parts read like a hippie commune’s prescription for removing all structure so a little one learns through self-discovery. The overall point of the book falls somewhere in between. As a teacher, coach and fairly new parent, I often draw on the lessons of this book, and if you have young kids or work with them, I recommend it.

Bear with me—there is a connection to hockey here. While in River Falls I was coaching the boy’s high school team and a Pee Wee C team (this interestingly enough brought me back to Rhinelander where we faced the Rhinelander “C” team in the constellation finals of the State Tourney and lost 5-4. Little did I know that a couple years later I’d be coaching those Rhinelander boys when they were in high school).

At the time, Karyn Bye was a member of the USA Hockey Women’s Olympic Team. She was from River Falls and right before the Olympics started she came home and skated with the local teams. She was a finely-tuned athlete, the epitome of what could be achieved with hard work and complete utter dedication to a goal over many years.

My jaw dropped when I watched her start side by side with our fastest high school player and beat him in a sprint down the ice. He skated forwards; she started and continued backwards until they were face to face.

The women’s team won Gold in Nagano, Japan that year. The men didn’t medal, but did receive some press for trashing hotel rooms. It was the first year that players from the NHL played in the Olympics as well, making the story all the more tabloidish.

In 2002 the men’s Olympic Gold medal game in Salt Lake City featured the USA vs. Canada. I was back in Rhinelander and watching the game with several friends, all of us involved in coaching here in town. Maybe it was in reacting to all the soon-to-be too inappropriate nationalism spreading over the country, maybe it was a hypocritical, uppity attitude about the same team that embarrassed themselves in Nagano, but I found myself thinking “You know, I think I like Canada in this game.”

I remember trying to humor the guys that it was because Wayne Gretzky was in charge of Team Canada. It also could have been that I simply like to push buttons sometimes. Probably both. Canada won 5-2. I wasn’t upset. Once in a while one of the guys still gives me a cheap shot about my conduct that day.

With all respect to team USA head coach Herb Brooks, even if they had won in 2002, it wouldn’t have even compared to the significance of the Gold Medal he led the team to in 1980. That ’80 team was a bunch of college kids, which had to get past a Soviet team that compared talent-wise to many NHL all-star teams.

USA hockey continues to promote the instruction of hockey skills. In addition to the coaching resources they provide, the mission is also fulfilled through awards, national tournaments, development camps and its own hockey magazine marketed to kids.

Of the 600,000 members there is always the goal of developing about 100 of them that will compete for roster spots for a chance at men's and women's gold. But here is where USA Hockey has really impressed me: USA Hockey values the experience of the other 599,900 members just as much.

I attended a USA Hockey coaching clinic held a couple weeks ago on what will probably have been the last warm, sunny Saturday this year. I was irritated and thinking “this is one reason to consider supporting Team Canada in 2010.” I would’ve rather been putzing around in my yard. I went not expecting to really be exposed to information that I haven’t already been exposed to in my 10+ years of coaching.

Still, like any conference I attend, I go looking for the one or two gems of information I can immediately apply to fine tune what it is I am doing. I got that and more.

The conference was led by a mite level coaching veteran of 20 years. His asset was that he’d never played hockey himself. I’ve begun to develop this theory that sometimes the better coaches are ones who never played the games they coach, if they become strong students of the game. They don’t have prejudices from their own playing days that allow them to dismiss the skills curriculum of outfits like USA Hockey. So he presented us with four hours of slides, video clips, outlines and anecdotal stories before heading to an on-ice session.

What he presented was the hockey version of the message in The Hurried Child. He emphasized play, fun, sportsmanship and remembering the kids’ age. It wasn’t our job to get them ready for the Olympics. His program suggested a reasonable progression of skill development, taught through activities that de-emphasize waiting in lines.

We learned nothing about X’s and O’s, game strategy or scouting—although these all have their place in the coaching and playing progression. A final perk to the day was that I got to know a couple of the guys I am coaching the Mite B team with a bit better...and that's where I'll pick up next time.

Next blog—Hockey Part II: Local coaches who work to "unhurry" the child