17/18 October
Off the ice I spend Sunday and Monday night in a coaching clinic. As this is my first year with squirts I attend the level-I hockey clinic which has a virtual delivery in pandemic times. As it’s virtual, the hosts of the clinic are in Minnesota, and the clinic runs on Zoom from 8:30-11:30 on two consecutive nights. In that sense, the time works for me, but I skip both a men’s league game and Monday night practice. I coordinate a ride for Brendan so he doesn’t miss out. Growing up in a town where we had a unified sports program, and the kids you went to school with were the same ones in the little league, youth hockey, or Pop Warner football program meant that everyone knew everyone, kids and parents alike. So it’s nice to be able to ask another parent or coach to drive my son to and from practice knowing I’m ready to reciprocate the action. Last season the adults missed out on getting to know each other, and there seems to be more team-parent unity this season. In this way, youth sports is important way to build social capital in the community.
The virtual clinic is surprisingly good. It gave me a chance to talk with coaches of other U10 teams across the country, and the experiences we shared are remarkably similar. Everyone struggles with learning the new rules, and everyone deals with varying degrees of talent. I pick up some coaching tips ranging from how I talk to the kids to how I demonstrate a drill. I also pick up a couple of book recommendations.
Since my time as an assistant coach of the mites team, I habitually talked to all the kids standing up. I did this when describing drills or walking them through positioning on the ice. I’m 6’3, and when I’m on skates in front of a nine-year-old I must appear to be eight feet tall. The more experienced coaches in the clinic recommend taking a knee every time I talk to the team, a technique I immediately embrace in the next practice. Kids aren’t miniature adults and expecting them to maintain eye contact and pay attention while my words literally go over their heads is not the best method for imparting hockey knowledge.
The second technique I learn is to demonstrate the various drills in silence. If two things are true in life, one is that everyone claims to be good at multitasking, the other is that nobody is good at multitasking. Kids can listen to a coach talk through a drill or they can watch the demonstration of the drill. Talking over my shoulder while demonstrating is distracting, and only creates more confusion for the kids. Now I take a knee, talk through the drill, then get up and demonstrate in silence. So far, I can see an improvement in communication with the team.
24 October
One of the keys to maintaining sanity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic is to remain flexible. Plans change with little to no notice. We have a game scheduled against Virginia Beach, but early in the week the VA Beach team had an exposure to the virus. Our plans change and we use our home ice for a game against the Prowl 2 (P2) team.
The game is a blowout from the beginning, and we lose 11-5.
On the plus side, the kids don’t quit, and we score our 5th goal with less than a minute remaining in the game. The goal scorer performs a small celebration which on the face of it seems absurd given the score. If this was a higher level of hockey and not a bunch of nine and ten-year-olds, a lecture would probably follow in the locker room about when it is appropriate to celebrate a goal, and when it’s not. However, to me, the celebration is an indicator that the kids are still having fun, which is really the objective of hockey at the squirt level.
Not everybody had fun in the game. As the goals rack up, Brendan starts to lose his mind a bit. At one point he skates to the bench nearly in tears as the game turns into a runaway. Quickly emotion drives his play instead of passion. Towards the middle of the second period, he runs into an opposing player and is assessed a minor penalty with a misconduct tacked on. He sits in the box for a long time. The other team scores on the power-play, and continues to score when Brendan isn’t on the ice to contribute. This latter aspect becomes a point of discussion, as I explain to Brendan that he hurt his team when he plays out of control.
Kids celebrate their accomplishments no matter what’s on the scoreboard
When I reflect upon the game afterwards, I realize I should have pulled him off the ice as I saw his emotions getting out of control. I also think that should ask my fellow coaches on the bench to help me with this judgement in the future, as it is impossible to objectively evaluate your own kid. We all have unconscious biases and holding your own kids to different standards is one that we all share. The second reflection translates to a talk with Brendan on why he plays hockey. You have to be careful with kids and sports, and sometimes they become more passionate about winning than they do competing. It’s not a love of hockey, football, baseball, or tennis, rather it’s a love of winning. That can be dangerous and lead to burn-out real fast. Even precocious youth athletes will eventually reach a level where everyone possess their talent, and if you value winning over competing and playing the sport, quitting becomes the most likely option.
27 October
This week Brendan’s school had a field day at the same time of hockey practice. I left the choice to Brendan on which event he wanted to attend, giving him agency in the decision. I mention that I still have to attend practice as I made a commitment to the team as a coach, but told him that there was no right or wrong answer for him.
I say there is no right or wrong answer, but to an extent I am happy with his decision. It’s important to spend time with multiple groups of friends, and sometimes a day off from practice is good for physical and mental recovery.
We award the hardest worker championship belt to Ken, who stepped up to play goal this week. It was his first time in net, and he came to practice ready and eager to learn the position. Not only did he perform well in goal, but he threw all his effort into the position. At our level of the game we rotate players in net, and it tends to serve as point of reflection for all the players that take the time to do it. Every single one comments on the lack of a defenseman protecting the net, and how they can see their teammates bunch up as they chase the puck instead of skating to open ice. I firmly believe that a week in goal turns each skater into a smarter and generally more aware hockey player.
30 October
Taking a day off from practice seems to help Brendan as he scores five of the team’s six goals in a game that ends in a 6-6 tie, to include the game-tying goal with about 90 seconds left. There is no shootout or overtime at the U10 level and the tie will keep both teams hungry for the next win. Further, close games tend to bring out harder skating and effort from both teams who have something to play for until the game clock strikes zero. When I talk to Brendan after the game we both agree that its more fun to play in a competitive game, a close loss, a tie, or a close win than it is to be on either side of a blowout win. He mentions a couple games from the previous year in mites when we won some lopsided victories, and how those games tended to get a bit boring. I tell him that we often learn more from losing, and that winning big can hurt in the long run, as you can pick up bad habits that work against inferior opponents but will lead to defeat against teams that play at or above your level.
Skating off the ice after a hard fought 6-6 tie
From the coaching perspective, I smile at the result. The P1 and P2 team all train together, and I hate to see any of the kids disappointed. A tie game also validates the method we used to split the players into two teams at the start of the season. We divided the talent equally. The 11-5 game seems to be an anomaly considering the other two games were decided by two goals. Kids tend to stay engaged, remain passionate, and skate hard on every shift when they believe the game is winnable, or that the opponent has the capability to beat them.
After the game we collect the goalie gear from this week’s goaltenders, as Brendan volunteered to play goal for the following week. The discussion on blowouts would prove to be a premonition of sorts.
1 November
I arrive to practice on Monday evening and hand out pictures to various players on the team. Throughout the season I take pictures with a Canon digital camera, and every so often print some out after editing them at home. I did this last season when I coached the mites and the players and parents seen to generally appreciate the effort. As a kid playing youth sports I had a little league baseball coach that printed out photographs and handed them out at practice every so often. I still have these in boxes and photo-albums in my house, and I value them more as I get older. Of course, today I can go home and edit the pictures and discard ones that don’t turn out so well. The next day I can head to CVS and print out 4x6 pictures at $.37 per photo. My little league coach had to drop the roll of film off at the Photomat, pick them up two weeks later, and hope for the best. If you are ever given the choice of an era to live in, choose the current one.
Printing out photographs in the the modern era is a lost art. About 99% of the pictures I took with either a digital camera or my smartphone reside on social media or on an external hard drive. These include pictures of vacations, family, and friends. It occurred to me about two years ago that if I get hit by a bus, all these pictures probably go to the grave with me. I purchased a photo album last year for Sabrina and Brendan, and have been filling them with selected photos from the time they were born until now. Pictures with family, with friends, and action shots from tennis, basketball, and hockey all make their way in.
7 November
It’s a cool autumn morning when Brendan and I depart the house for the hour-long drive to Virginia Beach. We typically depart 2-hours before game time, and sometimes we arrive about an hour before, and other times we barely make the game. Anyone who has spent time in the Hampton Roads area understands the trials and tribulations of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT), and the daily unpredictability it brings into the commute of tens of thousands of people. Today we are clear of traffic, which works nice as getting on the goalie gear takes a little extra time.
Brendan playing goalie for the first time this season. Every player has an opportunity to play in net and learn a little more about the game and about themselves
Throughout the week the team’s confidence is high, but that all disappears in the first few minutes of the game. Virginia Beach scores a few quick goals and is up 6-1 after the first period. It’s 12-1 after the second, and once VB opens a 10-goal lead the scoreboard stops tracking their goals. Brendan does pretty well, but is overwhelmed by the number of shots. When VB scores their tenth goal I call timeout to talk to the team.
During the timeout I tell each player to look at the scoreboard. Then I tell them to look at me, because that is the last time, they will look at the scoreboard for the remainder of the game. The contest is no longer about winning or losing, but about doing their best on every shift. The team responds and controls the play for the next few minutes, but eventually VB scores again, and again. But the kids don’t quit.
The game brings out an interesting factor in youth team sports. Sometimes a team has one or two players that are on a different level than everyone else on the field or on the ice. Often this comes when a kid has been solely focused on one sport, spending the entire year in that field. Other times it happens based on the size of the kid playing. In the latter, it could come from genes passed down from large parents, or other times it’s because they were born early in the year. In a league that spans two age groups, this can mean a player 1 year and 11 months older than other kids on the ice. Meaningless as an adult, but a huge advantage in physical and cognitive development when you can count your age on you fingers. In the game today, VB had one of those players who was responsible for most of their goals. It’s frustrating to the players, and to me as a coach, but sometimes 9 and 10-year-old kids amaze you with resilience.
We score our second goal late in the third period, at a point where I lost track of the score. The team bangs their sticks on the ice and against the boards to celebrate with Josh, who scored his first goal of the season. Blowouts build character but they also build bonds between the players. When people go through hard times together it often brings them closer together, from tough losses in youth sports, to the trials and tribulations of combat; getting overcoming adversity forges deeper friendships.