Handling Fear in Youth Hockey (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of an article first published at hockeythinktank.com. It is a must read for any hockey parent. Topher Scott is a Hockey Director of a youth AAA club in Central NY. Special Thanks to Topher for taking the time to share your message.
Part 2
…..I know because I’ve seen it as a college coach…and I know because I lived it.
When I was younger, my parents kept me with the good coach of the not-so-talented team rather than having me play for the “All Star” team that was heavily recruited and had a coach with the wrong intentions. Three years later, the All Stars came to play for the good coach because our rag-tag group of kids that loved to play began beating them and they were having a miserable time with all of the pressure to win that was put on the kids and the families.
It was a great experience having gone through it, and looking back it was a PhD of what hockey development looks like. Half our team went on to play college/pro hockey.
And as a college coach, it’s easy to see what the kids that really make it have in common:
They have a passion for the game.
They love to play. And through that love to play comes a love to get better. And the better you become, the better your chances of achieving your goals and dreams.
That ever-important passion is something that can be sucked out of kids if you treat them like adults too early. I’ve seen too many talented kids go through it. Way too many.
Seriously, way too many. So parents, please, if you want to help your kid achieve their dreams of playing hockey at a higher level…keep that in mind. The best thing that you can do for your kid is to put them in an environment where that passion can flourish.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Because the feedback that I get from the coaches completely flips the script.
You certainly have coaches and admins perpetuating the FOMO in the parents by professionally coaching their kids at too early of an age. But you also have parents putting the fear into coaches for NOT coaching their kids professionally enough. All youth coaches will empathize with the following scenario:
They catch heat from the parents of the more talented players if their kid doesn’t play all game and thus not coaching to win. They are threatened by the best players’ parents that if they don’t play their kid all the time, they’ll leave and find some other coach that will. Their kid needs to win so they can be on a top ranked team so they will be scouted. Oh yes, this happens. Again…at way too young of a level.
But on the other side, coaches will also catch heat from the parents of the kids on the bottom end of their team if they do shorten the bench. They will hear from those parents that their kids are losing their love for the game because they don’t play enough.
So…
They have one quarter of their team’s parents upset at too little coaching to win and not playing their kids enough. And they have another quarter of their team’s parents upset about too much coaching to win and not playing their kids enough. It’s lose-lose and we are losing a lot of good coaches in our sport because they just don’t want to deal with this kind of madness.
These scenarios…they happen EVERYWHERE.
This dynamic between some parents (especially parents of the more talented kids who have FOMO) and the coaches is extremely unhealthy and it toxifies team cultures. So again, let me reiterate:
*I played for teams with a great coach, great culture, and bad talent. We ended up being better than the team with the bad coach, bad culture, but great talent. Over time, coaching and culture won out. The talent/ranking didn’t.
*As a former coach in college, PASSION is a huge differentiator between kids that make it and kids that don’t. If the culture you are generating within your team (whether you are a parent or a coach) is creating an environment that doesn’t foster passion…you need to take a look in the mirror and make some changes.
At the end of the day…the fear of judgement, the fear of missing out, the fear of the unknown…these are real fears in the youth hockey world. And if we don’t take steps to address them, our game will continue to suffer.
Part 3 (final excerpt) coming next week!