It's time to take a look at how far minor hockey has steered from core principles of recreation and is simply a feeder system for businesses across Canada.'
As we end the annual rookie camps or 'young stars' tournaments that various teams around the NHL host before regular training camps open up I can't help be reminded of how much they remind me of 'try outs' for youth hockey. Coincidentally for many families across Winnipeg, and certainly other places across Canada, these tryouts are happening right now.
For some, such as myself, it's old hat- a process that you know well and have been through many times. For others it only reinforces the worship, devotion and dreaming of stardom that is so well laid out in Ken Campbell's book "Selling the Game". So many parents arrive at community centre rinks to talk shop about what programs their kids were in all summer in preparation for their long seasons at age 8, 9, 10 and beyond. Forget the names of Atom and Peewee or others they matter little anymore it's all about competition and making the team.
As one parent said to me a few years ago "You can tell who was at the rink all summer and who was at the lake drinking beer on the dock".
"Burp" I replied, "How's my tan?"
That process of preparation rears it's ugly head best when it comes time to see the kids on the ice for try-outs. Some parents huddle up in the stands feeling the cool air of the rink compared to warm fall days outside as conditioning for things to come while many others gather around the glass to talk about what they see their kids and the 'competition' doing on the ice.
Competition is one word to describe what happens on the ice but community centres, convenors and the governing bodies call it something different "try-out evaluations". Oh yes, there is plenty of evaluating going on by the select few sequestered away from the viewing parents. The same type of evaluation is happening of them as well, the parents, and the the overall process; one that is often rigged, biased and far from the principles of recreation that long ago were what bound kids and communities together.
Over the course of the next few blogs I'll try to give you a look at what could arguably be one of the dirtiest, lowest forms of child manipulation around and guess what? Millions of parents pay for it to happen.
I'll try to give you a detailed, with anecdotal accounts, view of the process going from Tim Bits to junior hockey. What I hope to show you is how we the parents, the funding agents of minor hockey, are almost powerless to enact change and how we are manipulated into the process.
There's an opportunity for you to be involved as well. I want to hear your stories and tell them. If you have experienced a situation in youth hockey from Tim bits to Bantam or Junior where you knew things were wrong, either by morals or structure I want to hear it. Send me a message on the website or Tweet me Teddier and I will contact you.
Yes training camp is here and we all look for youth to realize their dreams of making an NHL team but for more than 99.9% of kids who play minor hockey they will never have that dream. So why is our hockey system built to leave them behind?
The investigation begins.