Preparing for a Successful Season: For Hockey Parents, Less Often Proves to be More

By Scott Lowe - MYHockeyRankings.com

The role of parents in a young person’s overall athletic experience cannot be underestimated.

While this certainly is true over the course of their kids’ athletic careers, the influence of parents also plays a large part in determining whether a specific season can be called a success.

It’s easy to watch a youth hockey game and pick out the players who have a natural affinity for the sport and at that moment are the best players. Over the course of the season, these players are likely to score the most points and depending on the age and ability level of the team, they might receive the most playing time and be used in most critical situations.

Being the most talented player, scoring a lot of points and playing more than most of the other players doesn’t guarantee a “successful” season, though. If an athlete was a dominant performer, but some of the individual achievements came at the expense of the team’s overall success or the player was consistently exposed to messaging that undermined the team or the coach at home, it’s possible that the season was far from successful and in fact may have set that athlete up for future failure.

There are many factors that can be considered when determining the relative success of an individual athlete’s season. As someone who coached more than 25 years at various levels and spent 15 years working in NCAA Division I athletics programs, I would consider a season successful if the athlete’s individual skill level improved, an understanding of the importance of fulling the role assigned by the coach and sacrificing individual accolades for the overall benefit of the team was developed,  the athlete felt like a valued member of the team who contributed to its success, a level of pride in working and competing hard for good of the team was instilled and the athlete had fun.

As a coach, I often worried when a season ended if I had provided the best possible experience for the players on the team. I remember one season ending with a particularly excruciating playoff loss. The players were visibly upset, and I asked one of them how he was feeling.

“I’m not sad because we lost,” he said. “I’m just sad that we don’t get to play anymore.”

That was music to my ears, and for that season at least I didn’t have to beat myself up and worry about whether I had provided a good experience.

And as a parent, since my son was that player, I also felt that that his individual season had been “successful” based on that response alone. He had just given everything he had to help his team win and suffered a painful loss, yet his initial reaction was sadness because he wouldn’t get to play with that group again.

The most fun and satisfaction I ever had as a coach didn’t come from winning a championship. It happened the year I helped a 12U baseball team that started the season with a 2-12 record learn the value of being coachable, sacrificing to help the team be successful, continuing to work hard despite adversity, staying the course and trusting in each other and the process.

We hit rock bottom with an embarrassing 23-2 loss that was our 12th setback in the first 14 games. There was a talk in the outfield. We made a pact with each other to never let that happen again and went back to work. We concluded that season above .500 with more than 35 wins and peaked at the right time, advancing to the quarterfinals at Cooperstown.

Every single kid on that team improved, contributed to our turnaround and was valued by the coaching staff. As both a coach and a parent, I knew that season was a success for the team and the individuals.

Parents of athletes of all ages can play a huge part in the overall athletic experience for a child in many ways. They can be active supporters of both the individual and the team, provide guidance and feedback as necessary, volunteer to serve in a team administrative role or just be there as often as possible to be visible, celebrate the successes and provide a shoulder to lean on when things don’t go so well.

While there are many ways that parents can positively impact a young hockey player’s experience, there also is a fine line between being supportive and getting in the way. Unfortunately, way too many parents end up crossing that line and risk turning what should be a positive and enjoyable growth experience into something that can negatively impact their kids for both the short and long term.

The best advice for parents of athletes of any age is to err on the side of being less involved.

That can be easier said than done but take this advice to heart. It comes from someone who has had two kids who went on to have successful college athletic careers at the NCAA level and who runs hockey programs designed to help young players who hope to play beyond 18U and high school navigate the pathways available to them. And it comes from someone who has coached various sports at the youth and high school levels for nearly 30 years and worked for NCAA Division I athletic programs for 15 years.

So, for nearly 30 years – my oldest child played NCAA Division III ice hockey and is now 26 – I’ve teetered on both sides of this challenging balancing act.

As I parent, I absolutely let my heart and emotions get the best of me more than once and probably overstepped my bounds, but the more I coached and spent time around high-level college athletes and coaches, it became crystal clear to me that when it comes to being a parent of young athletes, less is more.

Less criticism of our own kids. Less criticism of the coach and other players. Less over-the-top cheering for the successes and anger about the failures. Less excuse-making for our kids. Less concern about how other players perform and are treated. Less coaching other than to reinforce the messages coming from the actual coaches. And less hand-holding.

This doesn’t mean that parents shouldn’t go to the games, cheer for their kids, encourage them or console them. It’s important that whether things are going well or poorly a young athlete can tell with just a quick glance at the bleachers how proud the parents are or that they are there with them through thick and thin.

As adults we still look for encouragement and positive reinforcement in most everything we do. Kids are no different, and most of them thrive on that type of feedback, especially from their parents.

But be careful; everything in moderation.

Of course, it’s fine to cheer for your child or the team when a goal is scored or something positive happens. And it’s natural to be disappointed when things don’t go so well for our kids and their teammates. But screaming and yelling like it’s the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the good stuff can make the silence when something goes wrong make the situation seem that much more excruciating.

Those wild swings of emotion from the adults in the room can cause a game to feel way more important than it really is. That can make something that should be fun stressful.

From a big-picture perspective, these still are kids doing something they enjoy. The experience must be fun first and foremost or what’s the point of participating?

The game gets serious enough fast enough as players climb the ladder of advancement, so our goal as parents should be to make sure that the environment we help create for them is as enjoyable and stress-free as possible.

It seems logical to assume that young hockey players fell in love with the sport – or at least with the idea of playing the sport – at some point. If they have an affinity for the game, love being around their teammates and dream about playing the sport at the highest level they can achieve, as parents we should do everything we can to ensure that they keep on loving it.

As they advance in hockey, that love will go a long way toward helping them continue to progress toward realizing their hockey dreams. Young athletes who truly love something and want to be able to participate as long as possible to hopefully reach their full potential will find it much easier to put in the required hard work necessary to achieve their goals. Enjoying and embracing that process gives players a sizable advantage over those who really view it as work.

It's very hard to advance to the highest levels of any sport, and at some point, every athlete hits their ceiling. That doesn’t have to be the end for the ones who really love it, however.

Their love for the game will compel them to find ways to participate throughout their lives. Maybe they will keep playing in adult recreational leagues or try coaching or perhaps even pursue a career in the sport outside of playing or coaching.

At worst, they will have a lifetime activity they enjoy that can provide a diversion from the stress of everyday life and help them lead an active, healthy lifestyle. It also will provide them with something they potentially can share and enjoy with their children that can provide a lifetime of family memories. And it’s also possible for them to carve out a career getting paid well to be involved with something they love even if they aren’t able to reach their goals are players.

How many people out there would do anything to be able to get up and go to work every day doing something they truly love?

An overemphasis on the wrong elements of sports participation – such as the wins and losses, point totals or status at the top of the lineup – can lead to an increased level of stress and tension for athletes at a young age. That, in turn, can destroy their love for a sport.

In addition, stressed-out athletes are not going to perform well; there’s no way that tense players can compete to the best of their ability for a variety of reasons. Increased tension in the body slows reflexes, and stress can cause an athlete who has competed freely without fear to become ultra-conservative in hopes of avoiding mistakes.

If we think back to the first time our kids took the ice for a game, there was an innocent joy and excitement. The kids played with smiles on their faces and their demeanors hardly changed whether they won a close game or lost by double digits. They loved being around their buddies in the locker room before and after games and just wanted to be part of a team and do something that was really fun.

Unfortunately, as I watch older kids play today, much of that joy seems to be missing, especially among the players who aspire to play at the college level or beyond. The smiles have vanished, and their body language often indicates an ever-present level of stress and disappointment. In speaking with them, many almost never seem happy or satisfied with their play, their team’s play, their teammates, their coaches and their roles on the team.

It's a sport that too often is characterized by anger, stress and disappointment among many of the players as they continue to pursue their goals. Somewhere between the smiles and joy we see from the youngest hockey players to the frowns and anger we see on the faces of so many teenage participants, we’ve lost our way.

They don’t go from happy and innocent to stressed out and angry by themselves. There must be outside factors influencing their thoughts and feelings along that way that continue to build within them over the years.

Of course, actions of peers or harsh coaches can bring on some of these feelings, but that tends to happen more as players get older. When kids are younger, parents spend more time with them than just about anyone, and younger children look to their parents for guidance, direction and support. They also tend to fall in line with the beliefs and opinions they hear frequently from the adults in the house.

Every negative conversation about hockey that takes place on the car ride home after a practice or game plants a seed. While they may not be engaging or responding, kids hear every criticism of their coach and every negative comment about their teammates. Some parents may be careful about what they say in front of their kids when they are alone, but maybe when two families go out eat at a tournament or after the game the conversation often turns negative toward the coaches or other players on the team.

Kids are sponges; they hear and absorb way more information than we think they do. They also tend to imitate adults – especially their parents – so it’s likely that eventually some of their parents’ thoughts about their coaches and teammates are going to creep into their own conversations at school, in the locker room and on the bench.

As years go by, naturally players are going to develop at different rates, and some are going to take a sport more seriously than others. As players separate themselves from others in terms of their skill and commitment levels, the kids who have been listening to negative comments about others at home over time – and who are now maturing and expressing themselves more openly – are likely to begin getting frustrated with some of their teammates and possibly even trying to turn players against them.

This also can happen with the player-coach relationship. Children generally want to make the adults in their lives happy. They seek approval from their parents and teachers, so naturally as they begin participating in sports, they are going to want to appease their coaches as well.

Years of hearing their parents complain about, question and undermine coaches at home eventually will change a child’s opinion and willingness to please the coach. This ultimately can lead to a player either becoming uncoachable or perpetually unhappy with the coach. Neither of these outcomes bodes well for a player’s chances of having a successful season or progressing to the highest level of the sport that he or she can achieve.

It's no different from kids who become problems for teachers at school. If the parents believe that the child is always right, the teacher is never right and the teacher is incompetent, at some point the child loses respect and doesn’t see the point of obeying the teacher or doing schoolwork assigned by someone who doesn’t know what he or she is doing.

When I give teenage players who are struggling with their coaches advice, I often frame it this way: “You don’t have to love your coach, and maybe your style doesn’t fit the way the coach wants to play. Regardless, the coach runs the show and pulls all the strings, so if you want to play you have to do whatever you can to earn the coach’s trust and to make the coach happy.”

Parents will not always agree with coaches. That’s natural and okay, but if they express that to their kids or in front of their kids on a regular basis, it becomes much less likely that the player will strive to make the coach happy, which ultimately diminishes his or her chances of having a successful season.

Likewise, the more that parents complain about how other players on the team play and how the coach uses them, the more likely it is that the player will focus more on that than simply focusing on fulfilling the role assigned by the coach to the best of his or her ability.

Each of these scenarios can lead to a season that is less than successful for an individual while also having a negative impact on the team’s overall performance. Fractured teams rarely reach their potential. Underachieving teams often cause frustration among the players, parents and coaches.

Similarly, a young player who is exposed to this type of negativity regularly over time is likely to struggle with almost any coach or any group of teammates in the future. All of this adds up to a lot of the stress, anger and unhappiness that we see among teenage hockey players who are looking to continue advancing to higher levels.

These feelings also cause way too many young players to give up a sport that at one point they had fallen in love with. This may be the saddest outcome of all.

Fortunately for my kids, their love of the sports they played drove them to want to keep playing and put in the work necessary to achieve their goals. It was a huge commitment and a long journey that included many ups and downs.

As parents, we were there and very visible every step of the way to provide support and guide them but also allowed them to make their own decisions and tried to help them understand that every decision wasn’t going to make or break their futures and that every setback wasn’t the end of the world.

We didn’t always agree with the decisions our kids made - just like we didn’t always see eye to eye with their coaches – but we supported them and allowed them to carve out their own relationships with their coaches and teammates.

This isn’t to say that we were perfect sports parents by any means.

I yelled at more than my fair share of referees – something I’m not proud of – and I was too involved at times as both my kids were being recruited by higher-level teams and colleges. And we certainly expressed our reservations about coaches in front of them when we shouldn’t have.

But we let our kids handle their own business and never complained to a coach about playing time or looked to move them to another team or organization without their blessing. And because they loved their teammates, put the team first and were extremely loyal, they never wanted to do that. Our kids never outwardly disobeyed or disrespected a coach. They always played hard for their teammates and every year they improved.

So, it’s fair to say that most, if not all, of their seasons playing sports were successful. The teams didn’t always perform as well as they might have liked, but pretty much every experience was positive.

This approach also served both kids well as they continued advancing to higher levels. My son was drafted by teams in two Tier 2 junior hockey leagues, but his first year of juniors was a big adjustment – as it is for many young players.

After being the best player on his team for years and even leading his AAA league in scoring when he was 18, he found himself scratched several times at the start of his junior career. While it angered me and I didn’t think it was fair, he dealt with it himself, figured out what his coach wanted, worked hard to win his trust and ended up playing up and down the lineup most of the year and in the playoffs.

My daughter played college lacrosse for a nationally ranked program, and her first two years were during the pandemic. Her team played four games her freshman year and eight her sophomore year, which didn’t give her many opportunities to prove herself. On top of that, the coach was very loyal to his seniors during her second year after they had their final two seasons cut short.

While she didn’t play as much as she would have liked the first two years, she continued working hard on improving her left hand – as her coach had asked – and never missed a workout. She crushed the team fitness test every September, and the fall of her junior year she simply decided that she was going to keep working hard to make him happy while playing lacrosse the way she had played to earn her commitment in the first place.

Eventually, she moved into the starting lineup for her last two seasons and captained a Final Four team her senior year.

We never complained to either coach. We did talk to them about how the teams were doing whenever we would see them and offered to help with anything that we could while never bringing up our kids unless they mentioned them first.

I am now very good friends with both my son’s junior coach and my daughter’s college coach and have an enormous amount of respect for them. Although the situations were difficult for both kids and didn’t make me happy at the time, I believe that both of those coaches played very large roles in their successful college careers.

In addition to serving as captain, my daughter ended up being an academic All-American who finished with almost 100 career points while really only playing two full seasons.

My son played in all 102 games during his college career, no doubt because his first junior coach demanded that he learn to play the right way to get in the lineup regularly. He was a two-time captain and led his team in scoring twice.

While this will be a gradual process for parents of younger athletes, it’s important to let kids grow and venture out of the nest a little more each year. Way too many of the teenage players I deal with – even the ones who are 18 and 19 – have relied on their parents too much and really struggle to fend for themselves and interact with adults.

Many of their parents still drive them to every single workout and game – even when they are old enough to drive – and fill out every registration form while handling all communication with their coaches and other adults.

As players get older and look to advance to higher levels, coaches are not going to want to talk to parents about anything other than finances. Coaches will contact players they are interested in directly and expect responses back from them and not their parents. They will meet with players after games and when they are on recruiting visits. How the players conduct themselves and how responsive they are will play a large part in a coach’s decision-making process.

So many teenage players struggle talking to adults and aren’t responsive or responsible when it comes to communication. This usually is a direct result of parents who have been way too involved, and it not only sets the kids up to struggle with athletic recruiting but also in college and beyond.

It's not easy – trust me, I’ve been there – but every year parents should try to let go a little bit more.

Allow players to build relationships with their coaches and become comfortable interacting with adults. Include them in the decision-making process and value their opinions about what teams to try out for, what camps to attend and whatever other hockey activities they want to try. Continue to provide them with the information they need to make sound decisions and guide them while letting them steer the boat a little.

Not only will this make it more likely that their next season will be a success, but also it will set them up for a lifetime of successes on and off the ice.