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August 10, 2005
A HOCKEY LIFEHard Work and Joy Have to Remain in
the Mix
By Eric Kinkopf | From 
I was sitting down to write this column, when
the phone rang. It was Stan, an old friend from my previous life
back in the Midwest.
“Did you hear about BC’s kid?”
“Nope, I’ve been busy fixing the toilet,”
I said, always interested in serving up a softball to Stan.
“An appropriate assignment for a man of
your skills,” he said. “No, really.”
“Writing a hockey column.”
“OK. I don’t mean to interrupt –
especially when you’re doing something so surreal.”
“Cerebral?”
“You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to. Anyway,
I’ll keep it short. The word is that BC Jr. may be going D-1.”
The most interesting fact, here, Stan quickly
reminded me, wasn’t that BC’s kid might have a shot.
After all, he was fast as lightning and even quicker. And size wasn’t
going to be a problem judging by how big BC and the missus grew
'em. The most interesting fact was that if BC’s kid did, indeed
go D-1, it would make the fifth kid on a team of 12 Bantam Tier
2 players a few years ago playing Division 1 hockey in college.
BC’s kid was headed for Colorado Springs. The other four players
had landed at Princeton, Ohio State, Harvard and New Hampshire.
A sixth player from that team went on to play at Penn State, an
ACHA power, which annually makes a run at the Div. 1 club national
championship.
“Pretty amazing, huh?” Stan said.
“I’d say.”
“And, unless, I’ve missed something,”
he continued, “not one of those kids ever played a second
of Tier 1 hockey until maybe they were midgets, you know, in that
deal where they played some games before and after their high schools
seasons.”
I thought for a moment.
“If anything as younger kids, maybe for
a week or two on a spring team, once or twice. Maybe.”
“But no 95-game schedules or $10,000 investments,”
he noted.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Hell, some of them even had you for a coach
for a few years.”
All of that was, indeed, true. And, truth be told,
Stan was not a fan of Tier 1 hockey. He thought it generally was
overhyped and oversold to overeager kids and more overeager parents.
I don’t share the exact antipathy. Tier 1 hockey certainly
has its plusses and minuses, as do lower levels of hockey.
“It just goes to show,” Stan, continued,
“that you never know. Just let them play and hope for the
best. No need for all that fancy, schmancy stuff.”
He paused for a second.
“So what’re you really doing,”
he asked. “When you answered the phone, you didn’t sound
like you had your head down the commode.”
“Is this a senior moment? I already told
you – I’m working on a hockey column.”
“Back on the soap box, eh?”
“Every now and then.”
“Mind if I put in my two bits?”
“Be my guest.”
“Hey, no fooling. I got a few ideas,”
he said.
“No diatribes,” I said.
“You don’t think I know what that
means, do you?”
“I’m on a tight schedule,” I
said.
“OK, then just say one word,” he said,
“which would spare them the following 4,999 you’re going
to shove up their sensibilities.”
“And that word would be?”
“Nurture them. And don’t steal their
joy.”
That was seven words, but I didn’t say anything.
“Look, the fact of the matter is that you
never know. The best kid at 10 ain’t always the best kid at
15. The best kid at 15, ain’t always the best kid at 19, eh?
There’s so much else that goes into it. How hard is the kid
willing to work? How willing is he or she to listen? How badly does
he or she want to make it? Of all those kids we were talking about,
there, on that team, how many were always the best player on their
team? One, right? Just one. The rest were all just comers. I’ve
been thinking about this a lot, lately, as you might be able to
tell. And I was trying to think about one thing that tied all of
those kids together. I came up with two things. One, they all worked
like demons. They flat our busted their butts. And, two, they played
with a true joy.”
“Joy?” I interrupted. “You’re
not going soft on me, now, are you?”
“Back off, Hemingway,” he shot back.
“It is joy. They played like they loved to play. Some kids
don’t. Some kids are forced to play – and they play
like it. But those kids would play on Christmas Day – all
day.
“But, see, even that isn’t enough.
That joy can be strangled. Parents got to nurture that … parents
and coaches – them especially, too – need to be able
to recognize talent and joy. … Good things, really good things,
need to be simmered, slowly, over a gentle heat, not nuked until
it hardens.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yeah,” Stan said. “In fact,
try this out. Submit your monthly gospel with this one deal. Just
write, ‘Hey, don’t microwave your kids.’ Period.
End of diatribe. Then sign off.”
I didn’t of course.
But I did think long and hard about it.
Eric Kinkopf can be reached at feedback@hockeyjoural.com.
This article appears in the August issue of
New England Hockey Journal. Click here
to subscribe to the magazine.
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