Da Hockey Coach Guy & FEAR

The other day, my daughter's hockey team suffered a crushing semifinal loss in a tournament. Her team, for which I am the head coach, was chosen by many to win that game handily. Unfortunately, that was not the case: we lost 1-0. After the game, I told the girls the following: "I really didn't care if you won or lost; to me it's all about effort. I know that you did not give your best effort in that game AND, I know you know that too." [note: winning and losing are never part of my discussions with the team. As coaches I/we always focus on what they must do task-wise, effort-wise and strategy-wise... more on that in another blog.] I went on to say some other things, such as "sometimes you have to dig deep even though you are not feeling it, you need to find that other gear" as well as things like, "you need to draw from this experience" and "you win some, you learn some".

Anyhow, as we were leaving the rink, my daughter, who was clearly disappointed at the team's effort, asked me:

"Dad, why aren't you mad??"

"What do you mean", I asked?

"You should be mad at us for the way we played so we would be scared and play better next time."

Clearly she understands just how powerful a motivator fear actually is. After all, it is the method used almost exclusively by advertising departments: "Is your minivan prone to spontaneous combustion? Tune into CCCPNews at eleven to find out."

"Fear" I told her, "is not what I want young players to feel when they are playing organized sports".

When it comes to young player development (in fact, player development at any age really), fear does not produce consistent long term results. Fear may get me to jump out of a second story window ONCE, due to that blazing fire behind me, but it will also paralyze me from making that same jump off of a high diving board into the much safer deep end of the pool (yes, I'm 6'4" and I have issues with heights).

Additionally, I do not want a player to fear making a mistake. On more than one occasion I have told many players that I would rather watch them attempt to do something I ask, and fail, than not attempt it at all.

In the end it's about 2 things: confidence, the opposite of fear, and experience. Perhaps the defeat was a bitter pill for the team to swallow, particularly since they knew that this was NOT their best effort. Nonetheless, if nothing was learned from this experience then it truly was a loss. But if they can take away just a little something from it (how to better warm up, how to better prepare mentally, be more rested, whatever...) it will add to their experience and accordingly to their confidence as well..

The job as coach is not to scare players into performance, but to give them the strategies and more importantly, the confidence they need best prepare for their next game, and perhaps even for life itself... and with the price of arena ice, a couple hours a week is all the time I'll have to do this.