Developing Humans, not Robots

Athletics can be a direct metaphor to life. Things won’t always go your way, no matter how much you have practiced. For children, the swing of emotions and lessons learned during the course of a season can mold their futures, both positively and negatively. For most involved in the sport, winning takes precedence over everything else. The game is the test you have been working towards, the outcome is success or failure quantified on a scoreboard. While winning and losing is the typical measure of success, many forget that it’s the journey towards those wins and losses that count for much more.

The advent of the internet has created a way to compare one’s child and their teams to each other, typically with an algorithm based on wins and losses. At the end of the season, many people will place judgement on a coach, staff, or club based on their record that season. A successful season is far more than just the numbers in the goals for or goals against column each game, or the numbers in the win and loss columns at the end of the year. The bigger picture needs to be looked at.

There are many coaches and directors who feel the pressure from parents about winning. A practice has become less about individual successes, and rather the team success. Coaches are teaching individual systems instead of individual development. Clubs now believe that one night of skill development is enough, while two nights a week are dedicated to team play based on an individual’s philosophy, and it is creating robotic hockey players at a young age. Creativity and concepts are the real way to a child’s heart, not systems run by the most elite players on earth.

Winning is always fun, just ask the teams who have competed in our boys and AAU hockey tournaments in Michigan these last few weeks, but it is not everything. While you are competing in our tournaments, pay a bit more attention to your players individual skillset and play, and less about the overall outcome. It will give parents and players alike a different perspective on the game and make it a lot more enjoyable.