Trouble in
Paradise:
This story is about a high school
hockey team. They were playing a game against an inferior opponent, and they
beat their opponent easily, 7-0. There were two plays that happened during this
game that caught my eye. Both plays were a direct result of a lack of knowledge
about how important humility and teamwork are to a successful program.
The coach of this team is not a
yeller. He has been coaching for a long time and truly understands the journey
and how important it is to keep things in perspective. His teams do
consistently well both on and off the ice.
The first play I want to discuss was
actually a culmination of a series of plays that resulted in a key player
getting injured and removed from the game After scoring 5 goals in this game,
the player scoring , was celebrating and playing to his friends in the crowd.
The other team twice tried to hit him before they caught him with his head down
and delivered a clean check that resulted in an injury.
After the fourth goal I turned to
the friend I was sitting next to and said this is how kids get hurt during a
blowout and no one understands why. They point a finger at the opposing team
and its players for dirty play without being held accountable for their role in
the injury. And most of the time the kid that gets injured is not the player
who scored the goals, but sometimes, as in this case, it is the guy who scored
the goal.
There is an expression is sports
that says when you score a goal, a touchdown, or some other event that you act
like you have done it before. We used to say act like you expect to do it
again, and that you appreciate the many players that helped you make it happen.
I had the good fortune to talk to
this young man a couple of days later. about what had happened during the game. I explained to him what
really happened and why it happened. He is a very good kid band comes from a
family that understands the journey.
The second play happened a little
later in the game and was connected to the winning team’s reaction to one of the
star players getting hurt. One of their best players took the puck from behind
his net and skated all the way down the ice, cutting in front of the other teams
net trying to force the puck through the other team’s goalie. Now what really
happened there was that player could have got hurt also.
Or, he could have passed the puck to one of
the players on the ice that hadn’t seen a lot of playing time, thus having that
player become more involved in the team’s success. He would practice harder and
feel better because one of the best players had included him in the play during
the game.
People fail to realize what happens
after a game is over, and the long term consequences of what happened during
then game to mental well being of the players on both teams.
Kids talk, will text, face book, or something.
Players that don’t play feel excluded. I know some people argue that they have
to earn playing time and know their roles on a team. WRONG. Human beings do not
fully develop until they are into their twenties. Saying an athlete’s level of
skill and future ability is already established by the age of sixteen is not
supported by scientific facts.
The more kids you play the better
the whole team will be. Inter team competition and team development still is
and always will be the most part of a team’s long term success. Players develop at
different times in their lives and at different speeds. The more chances you
give them the better chance you have of finding out who can play. The less
chances you give them the less they develop. The less they develop the more
they feel disenfranchised. They don’t work as hard and as often as they should
because they figure what is the use.
Most of all of this behavior, and
its cause and effect principles have been lost on today’s reincarnation of youth
sports. It is now important to win and win big. You have heard the expression
blowouts don’t help either team. Hopefully in this blog you have learned that
they actually hurt teams, both teams. The winning team had a good player get
hurt and the losing team stopped playing together and decided to seek revenge
for what they felt was poor sportsmanship by the other team. Ironic, the very
behavior they were upset with, was the very behavior they used (poor sportsmanship)
to even up the “score.”
V.J. has
written a book on youth sports called Stop
the Tsunami in Youth Sports.You can follow him on twitter @VJJStanley, face
book( Frozen Shorts) website: frozenshorts.com, call the office 585-743-1020,
or email him at vj@frozenshorts.com
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