Ep 1. How to and how not to run tryouts

It's the time of year for hockey team tryouts. Hear about Susan's experiences out the wild and Dave's advice on how to do run simple, effective tryouts for house league and select teams.

Transcript

Dave: I always feel like I'm in the way in the morning with my two girls.

And, but really what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to help. And I think my helping leads to stress. So I'm like, well, I need to de stress this because they operate in the morning way different than I do. I get ready the night before. I got all my stuff ready to go at the door the night before. And then so when I wake up, I don't have to think because it's easy to forget things.

I like it at the door, my lunch, my bag, my hockey, my drill, whatever. And then I just go, I've been trying to train Darcy that and that lasts maybe for a day or two. And then the next thing you know, she's waking up there's no nothing at the front door. There's no, there's nothing right.

And so I thought, well. I've been trying this for a long time and I said, I just got to change it. How about if I get up the normal time, which is about five 45, six o'clock. That's what time I get up. and go down, clean the kitchen, have your lemon water, and then take the dog for a walk right away. So I was out by 6:30 with the dog and we went for about a 50 minute walk, which is great for both of us.

And I do a whole bunch of gratitude stuff. And then I come home and I know I'm going to be home in around 7: 20, 7: 30, they leave about 7:45. , then I I can make my breakfast, I can just kinda have a little breakfast meal with them. I get the waters ready, it kind of stay outta the way. And it worked.

It worked pretty good. You know, it worked pretty good. But, , there's so many things I'm watching going, oh, I wouldn't do it that way. I wouldn't do it that way. , just need to let it go. 

Susan: We drive my husband crazy the same way. He's trying to be a good guy. He doesn't say anything.

 Because it's, you don't want the stress. It's not worth it. But , you hold it in. And then, I mean, this was a strategy. You had a coping strategy. You have wanted to do something different. Whereas, , sometimes you just don't say anything and it just, it gets to you after a while.

. The constructive feedback only comes out when you've reached the end, I'm done. I've had it. You are all cretins and when the frustration gets to be too much 

Dave: no blame you just. You're trying to work with your partner in raising your kids, right? So so I'm curious what happened in the last couple of days at the tryouts?

What did you do? 

Susan: Oh my goodness. Okay. So, Leo was sick on Monday, so he couldn't go to the tryout. So I went to go see. I watched the reception desk where they were taking people in and they had a list of kids and they were checking , but they weren't checking that they had registered.

They were just recording, , this is the name of the kid. This is, , the, the pinnie that they have in the number that they have. And there were blanks at the bottom for more kids. And it's like, yeah, okay, they're not turning anyone away. And so I go on to there. So I go to decide to watch the tryout to see the caliber of the kids, to get to know the coaches, that kind of stuff.

 They had 29 kids trying out for two select teams. And so they had three people on the ice running the drills, and I didn't see anyone, like, scoring. But I was mistaken. I actually walked around a little bit and I found the people who were scoring. So, at first I was going, how can they run a tryout with nobody scoring?

And it turns out that There was a like the announcer's booth way up high that they had a couple of people scoring in there. All right. So they weren't super organized. So these were dads who knew how to play hockey, but I don't know what caliber of coach they were.

And I would say. Middle of the pack. This is based on a couple of things. One they were long gaps in between drills. Like they would run a drill and then they would come together and say, , they would talk and then they would do the next drill. I forget who told me this, or if I read it somewhere, you should never , in a tryout have all of you standing together because, then, , nothing good is happening.

And then there was this one drill that they didn't have good traffic control in their drills. So we've talked about this. Like, once you've completed the action, you need to have a way to either end the action or where do they go after so they divided the kids in half, and then they were centered along the center line, and then they would, , pitch a puck into the middle, and the two kids would chase after it, and whichever side won, you got to go score on your goal.

 And so the kids would go in and they would start fighting for the puck, and then they would, , go off. But, , sometimes the battle for the puck would take a little while. So they didn't whistle or anything to call them back in or to end it. They would just put another puck in.

And so they would have another pair of kids battling. At one point, they have five kids, five pairs of kids fighting for the puck. Five pucks at the same time. What could go wrong?

And I'll tell you what could go wrong. Okay, they did another drill. They divided the kids in half and they were using, , roughly half the ice each. So they were doing mirror image drills and they had a line next to the goal and the first kid would play offense and the second kid would play defense.

The kid playing offense would skate around the center circle and then the kid playing defense would chase them. But when they got around the blue line, they had to do a pivot and then skate backwards defend against them, do the poke, check, push them off to the side, whatever you do , as D. Now, there's some overlaps between the two sides.

. So you've got these people skating around the center circle, and then you've got the other side skating around center circle. What could go wrong? And it did go wrong so there was this one pair of kids, , they were doing their drills, they're doing their thing, and one kid, , just Skated into the other kid.

This kid saw it coming and so they were able to protect themselves. This kid didn't see it coming and he just completely Wiped out on the ice and he was lying on the ice and when they when they collided the entire arena went. Oh It was one of those who could see that coming this is like 

this is what happens when you Go from drills to practices, the one drill, you have to make it all work together. And we've talked about this. So they didn't have that. 

Dave: So the one thing with drills is you have to know your outcome.

And when number one key thing we want to evaluate the kids number two, you're not knowing how many kids are going to be coming out and number three, you had a good number of kids. So you had 30, but we're dealing with select kids. Select is really house league, so we're, we're getting how we play kids and we're like, all right, these kids are going to be super nervous.

How do we make it simple and fun so we can evaluate what's most important. Well, the most important drill or skill to analyze, especially for house league kids, Skating. So we want to be prepared with your skating. You probably want to do minimum 20 minutes of skating. And I'm just kind of throwing that number out, but you're at home.

So we want to evaluate skating. That's our outcome. Let's evaluate the skating from A, B and C, A being the top, C being the weakest. And let's get these kids evaluate with their skating first. And even with the skating, you can throw in some puck skills, , just them skating up and down with the pucks, whether they can handle the puck skating forwards or backwards, can do the crossovers, backwards crossovers, and then you can keep it really simple.

And what we want to do is be able to compare all of them together, apples to apples. Once you start dividing the group, half down there and half over here, sometimes as humans, we start to evaluate the group that we have. Within that group. So, if my group is really good, but the far group is not as good, you evaluate that group to that group.

And then all of a sudden, when you come back, well, this kid was a B, well, he's a B in my group, but was an A in your group. So, you want to make sure that you evaluate apples to apples. That's your to do list. That's where you go next. Okay. What are we going to do? And so even if you're an inexperienced coach, you're like, okay, we're going to be organized.

Let's have four lines because we can't have eight kids skating at once all the way down. If you've ever been as an evaluator, it's too many people. Yeah. It's too many people going up and down the ice. You're like, I can't evaluate. I'm trying to find the kid on my, my, my sheet. Oh, that number one is not very good.

And by the time you look back up, there's another group going, Oh shoot. , and you're back and forth. As a coach, if you've been an evaluator that we send the kids, it looks like it takes a longer time, but we're evaluating properly by the time the kids in front get to center ice, then you blow the whistle.

It's not tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, And they all skate down like a herd of elephants. .

Susan: So yeah, this all makes sense.

Dave: Then what happens is that you as coaches or as parents are actually evaluating what these coaches are doing. If you're seeing drills where kids are running into each other, all right, well, this kind of is telling me what the coaches are going to be like for the season.

Susan: So we're not going to go to the second tryout for that team. 

Dave: Okay, there you go. You know, there you go. 

Susan: I learned something. I went to single A tryouts last week and the complexity of the drills there were amazing. Leo, my son, the first time he did it, he was terrible. By the second, third time he was getting it.

And it's like, good job. he's a house league kid. He hasn't played select. We were going out to, , as a tune up. And also for the learning experience. And I learned a lot too. And I made a lot of notes on how they ran these drills. I haven't seen a lot of full ice drills before.

 My experience is in house league. And we only get half the ice. So I learned about how to run things on a full ice. I wrote down all of the drills, like when I come to, , the Hockey Extreme sessions. And I learned from that and I came up with a plan for our tryout that we're doing tonight.

And then I went to the select tryout and it was like, Oh, this is house league. , the skating drills that they did were the skating warmup that we do at the beginning of any practice, skate as fast as you can to the end. , skate as fast as you can back, whereas with the select kids, they were doing things like shuttle runs between the lines and, and the house league kids, they didn't do that.

And they did fairly simple drills, like go on your knees and get up again. . Standard house league drill. Go, go down on one knee and then go down on the other knee and then, , skate to the end. And then they repeated, 

Dave: That's absolutely correct. Yeah. Cause you want to be able to evaluate the kids at their skill level.

So if I'm doing a, a U 18 age group, I don't need to see if whether they can skate forwards and backwards. I going to be able to tell whether they're just skating around the ice and these guys are pretty good. We don't have to evaluate skating, but if we're doing house league, 10 year olds, 12 year olds, it's a good time just to clean out.

get some confidence in themselves, and then you evaluate, and then you have your other drills. If you're doing single A, double A, you're going to have different drills for that. And if you're doing triple A, you're going to have different drills for that. Usually your first tryout, you want to keep real simple.

You want to weed out. The ones you don't want back first. Then you might be able to weed out the ones that you really do want to sign and commit to right away, but they're going to be a whole bunch of ones in the middle, call it eight to 20, , you could have like 12 kids.

I'm just guessing the number of kids. They're all roughly about the same. What, they have this degree of 5 to 10%. This one might be a little bit better skater. That one may be better at crossovers. That one's better at shooting. That one's better at this. Now we need to go in the second tryout, competitive drills, battle drills, , something where it's a little bit more game situated and you'd be able to evaluate the kids appropriately for that age group and skill level too.

Susan: I found Hockey Canada had a guide for doing player evaluations. Of course they do, and this was for minor hockey. Now, I think what I'm doing is not minor hockey. I think what I'm doing is recreational hockey. Is that what they call it? And so, yeah. So minor hockey they have five tryouts. I don't think anybody does five tryouts.

Maybe, I mean, maybe at the, , the really high levels. 

Dave: I've never heard of five tryouts. Maximum three, usually by the second, the team's picked. And the third one is the practice. It's like the team practice, hopefully. 

Susan: Yeah. GTHL mandates three at, , double a and triple a levels. But they had a plan, , at this age, they get had a couple of sample tryouts for the really low age groups, , like the sevens and the nines, seven year olds and nine year olds at triple A.

 They had. Criteria for evaluating them and they had did they have a checklist? No, somebody else had a checklist. I mean, I don't know what I'm doing. So I Google . And these, these gems turn up.

Dave: Yeah. There's a lot of great advice out there. And drills out there.

Hockey Canada is definitely a really wonderful website to go to. It's about generating ideas. It's about going, how do I do this? And , if you've never done it before, and even an experienced person like myself, I will visit different websites just to generate different ideas or just as a reminder before I go out there.

But the number one thing is that you have to be prepared before showing up. And the hardest thing I prepare for a group of 20 kids. And then you have six kids that show up, three goalies, three skaters. Now, what do you do? Do you have the skill level to adapt to something like that? Or do you just go give up and just let them scrimmage?

Well, you still want to evaluate those kids that are there. If you still show a professional evaluation for that one hour with those kids. Parents will go, wow, what could they do if they had a full team? . But then what happens if you have an overabundance of kids? So you have 40 skaters and six goalies or even more than that.

Now, what do you do? And you have to be ready to adapt on, , right then and there to the situation that's given to you so that things run smoothly and the evaluation looks good for all the participants. 

On the reverse side of it. The coaches have to be prepared to do immediate cut and release when you have an overabundance of kids because you want to give those kids an opportunity to try out somewhere if there's an option.

Susan: Yeah that's a hard conversation to have. I mean,

Dave: especially in select, especially in select, because in the a double a triple a kids are allowed to travel around to different squads, , so if you don't make team a, you can go to team B. But at this one, I had to be reminded by my sister in law Denise that you got to sign up for the house league to try it for select.

And once you remind us, oh, yeah, that's right. I remember that now. And, and it's interesting. So now what do I do? Say if I sign to this house league, but I don't make the select team, but I know this other house league has an option to play on their select team. How do I get out? Will that team release you?

I'm not too sure how that works. 

Susan: So this is one of the things. That drives me crazy. There's what the rules say and, and what is done, and there are two different things. And you need a certain amount of domain knowledge to, to figure that out, and, and various teams will phrase it different ways and different teams are more or less militant about it.

Like they're, they're going to enforce or they're not going to enforce, and you don't know on the outside. Without having some knowledge about the team, which it's going to be so it's very tricky. 

Dave: It's very tricky. Absolutely. And unless you've been on the inside, then, , you know, yes, this is a good team to join or no, this is not a good team to join.

Susan: Yep. And, , there are. I'll just give you a couple of examples of rules. So GTHL governs the, the AA series, A AA AAA and, and NYHL governs SELECT. And sometimes people refer to the North York rules and sometimes people refer to the GTHL rules. Everyone agrees that you can only be registered for a single team at a time, 

correct. And, but there's nothing in those rules that say you must be enrolled before you do a select tryout. Hmm. So this is. By convention, because they don't want good players to be poached, 

Dave: or they potentially don't want teams to be poaching the best players to create the best select team. Now, some of these select teams are created, especially at the younger age groups.

, I'll call it six, seven, eight, and then they will move to the GTHL. That whole group will move to the GTHL. And if your organization has the capability of an A and a double A, we'll just call it that first, then most of those select teams will move straight into A or double A, the best teams will move into the double A and then the second tier select team moves in the single A.

That's usually how it kind of works when you get to the nine year olds. The AAA ones they, ? They have a special situation where they go after the AAA clubs and the AAA will look at them to see if they're good enough to play at the AAA level. And there's a lot of politics that goes on with that too.

So, yeah. Yeah. 

Susan: Let's talk about the politics a different day, because I want to get my son on the team first. 

Dave: Okay, sure, let's get your kid signed up for a team. 

Susan: Let's get him on a team, and then we can talk about the stuff. 

Dave: So, , what is the outcome for a tryout? And I think the number one thing is that we want to have every child evaluated equally.

And so how are we going to do that? If that is our outcome, or... Maybe your outcome is we want to create the best team possible. , every coach will have their own personal outcome, whatever it is, it should be one statement. And why do we want to do this? Why do we want to create this best team? Why do we want to create a team of fun kids and fun parents?

And , your list of why's will be, we want to have a great season. We want to, want to develop the kids. We want to develop them, , socially, mentally. We want to challenge them. We want them to grow. We want them, we want the parents to have a great experience as well. And then, well, how are we going to do that?

Well, it all starts with tryouts. Well, how do we do this evaluation period? Well, before we show up we need to have who's going to be doing the evaluating and usually it's the coaching staff and you're going to have, call it three people. I'm just making a number up, but usually you want more than one so you can cross reference your, your evaluation and you want to come up with an evaluation that's going to work for both of you.

So you're both using the same strategy, nothing 100.

Okay. When everyone's on the same page and then your notes will be comparable to each other and you're like, all right, so what do we need to evaluate first? And if we're dealing with house league , every age and skill level is different, but we'll just call house league skating.

Let's evaluate their skating. So are we going to hire someone to do the on skills or are we going to have another coach, another parent to do it? And if they're going to do it, we're not going to pay anyone. We want to make sure that we're prepared because we want to look. We want to run this so the parents are evaluating us to what we're doing.

If we're doing a crap job, why would I want to come to my team? I want to showcase a great team. So we need pucks, we need pylons, we need a whiteboard, and we want to keep the drill simple because we know the kids are going to be anxious. We know they're going to be kind of like nervous. So the simpler we keep the drill, especially in trial number one, , the more they're going to show their true ability.

And , from there, how do we evaluate those kids on the ice? Well, if they all have different colored jerseys, we don't know who is. Putting a little sticker on their forehead. Well, I need glasses just to see my notes. Ain't no way I'm going to see that sticker. You know what? I need something big and simple, 

a number on the front, a number on the back. And if you do want to have a scrimmage at the end, make sure you divide the kids equally between, I'll just call it black and white, gold and blue, whatever. So that you have equal number of kids on each bench. Not one team having 20 white and the other one having one dark color.

So, , there's a lot going on in preparing for this tryout, but really that's what the whole season's all about. It's about preparing for the season. And if you don't prepare, , we all know that famous expression, fail to plan, plan to fail, right? Yes, yes. And then from there... You, the person on the ice, brings all the kids in. You welcome them to the team. You welcome to the tryout.

Just do the best you can. We're not looking for perfection. We're just looking for the kids to try hard. And then the person who's on the ice are running exercises. Simple, safe. All the doors are shut. , the goalies can be evaluated with their skating. And then after doing 20 minutes of that, , you're going to flow very simply into the next drill that involves one on one chasing or shooting or something that shows their skills.

And it's very simple. And the whole hour flies by and the parents go, wow, that was great. It was so simple. Even we could evaluate what was going on the ice. Most critical time is when the tryout ends, , it's not a time for the, for the kids or for the coaches to go, Oh, let's go have a board meeting.

 You need to actually make decisions, especially for your. Your top kids who you want, you need to go speak to them right away. You need to do it quick and discreetly. And then the ones who you do not want back, maybe because they're just not skilled enough. , but you appreciate them coming out.

You need to have that conversation right away too. And then you need to have that second tryout, that second tryout right away. So yeah, tryouts can be a very simple when they're prepared.

Susan: We have a tryout tonight and it's like, well, the first question was who's going to run the tryouts and the other coaches said, Oh, let's run it ourselves. And I was like you sure you don't want to have like a professional run it, then we can watch.

It's like, oh, we'll take turns watching. No, no, no, no, you, we can't take turns watching. We, it has to be one person. It's like, yeah, but I want your decisions too. And it's like, okay. Okay. Yes, but you still need one person watching. So what we converge to actually what I directed us to do is you have better hockey eyes than me.

So you're going to be watching. I'm going to run the drills, but I want your input. Yeah, you'll get my input, but I need one pair of eyes watching. We'll get another person being a second evaluator if you don't want to make the call yourself. But we need that consistency. We, I asked about pinnies. Can we borrow some pinnies to do this?

I mean, why the league doesn't have pinnies that they can use over and over again? I don't know. But it's like, oh, why don't we just ask kids to wear different colors? It's like, yeah, okay, this might work. This might be terrible. And I think this gets to when you have Differences in numbers of kids that show up, 

we're starting a new team. We have no idea how many kids will show up. Maybe it's six. I don't think it's going to be 40. But the other night I went to a practice or a tryout and there were 30 kids on the ice. That's a lot of kids. It's a lot of kids. It's a lot of kids. A lot of moving parts. 

Dave: And so one of my instructors, we're going to try it for 60 kids on the ice, 60, six, zero.

And he was told there's only going to be like 30, 60 showed up. And could you imagine, ,

parents, I'm not against all parent coaches. I think they're passionate, but their focus is on different work. This is different work. And I think it comes down to the organization.

If you want to have successful teams, then the organization needs to step up and say, we like to bring in someone to discuss tryouts. And they're going to go over tryouts on what makes a successful tryout. And this is what we're going to do. And then they go over. Everything, , A, B's and C's of a hockey tryout.

And then on top of that, the organization steps up, we need pennies, we're going to buy the pennies, not for every team, but to have at the rink, so that you can recycle. We'll have enough pennies so that whoever's on the ice uses pennies. Then we'll have a second batch. For that next group to go on, then the first batch comes in and then we just share.

So you just really need two batches, but those can be used for at least five years, if not more, because you're only using it for two or three. You're not wearing them, you're just using them and you just put them away, because what happens if two kids showed up with two black jerseys wearing number 15?

Which one's which? You don't know. Trouble, 

Susan: Yeah. You don't know. 

Dave: You don't know. No, you don't. Yeah, but it looks everyone looked better. It looks at your organizations on on track and on top of it. And then you're trying to set up your coaches. It's not taking away anything from the coaches.

What it's adding value to the coaches, adding value to the program. That's all it's doing. 

Susan: Yeah, I think. Well, this is one thing that I noodle on about a lot, which is coaching isn't just one skill. It's a lot of different skills and you, it takes a village, if you want to put on a good program, you have your, your classic coach is somebody who's played hockey a lot, 

they've been playing hockey since they were four years old. They've done thousands of drills. They're now a parent and they go, I can do this. I can totally, I totally know the on ice stuff. They're bad at budgets. They're bad at sending out regular emails or, , but even if you're good at all of those things, it's too big a job for one person, , you need assistant coaches you need.

I mean, you can slice up the job a lot of different ways. And it's more sustainable if you have a coaching staff, your team needs a team. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Your, or your coaching team. 

Dave: Mm-hmm. And I think what you're really saying is that what is your wheelhouse? What are you good at? And that person who's going to be the head coach, well, he's probably a great communicator.

He's passionate. He knows drills. He has experiences that he can relate to the kids. That's his wheelhouse. And then you're talking about management, the treasurer, someone who's booking ice, calling this, calling that, talking to the parents, , about budgets and all that. You need someone else who likes to do that.

And, and then for a trial evaluation, , if you want to bring in someone only for a trial, it's such little money. You know what? The make you look good. The third tryout we talk about, the third trial, it's usually the team's already picked. You don't need the tryout person there.

 The trial person's only for the first two. And the third one, the head coach goes on the ice. It's pretty much. And if only comes down to two spots or one spot, then you run drills and that coach can get a real feel or the coaches of that. , the players are evaluating for the last one or two spots.

 But in the beginning, the first two, especially the first, it's nice to have someone independently to run that and to make sure that all the kids are evaluated properly. And you're evaluating properly, , from the stands. It'll look good. Everyone will look good on this. And it's good for everyone.

Number one, the kids. 

Susan: I went to a couple of tryouts last week. There was one where the coach did a really good job. He did exactly what you said, and he was a professional coach. And he came up afterwards and he said, thanks for, and he, they say it in a really nice way. They never say you're not good enough, 

it's like, , we don't have a place for you. It's like, you're not ready yet. , there's some, there's good language that you can use. And I asked the coach, , do you have any feedback? Do you have any suggestions for what we can do to get better? And he said, , work on the shooting, gave a couple of pointers.

And he said, work on the skating, gave some suggestions. And, and I think they're very doable. 

Dave: A really good coach knows from his experience or her experience that when they were growing up, they probably weren't the best player. That could have been at seven, eight.

10, 11, 13, 14. And it's not to those later years when sometimes it really kicks in for that child when she really wants to step it up. And there's always going to be a couple obvious ones, , that are coming up. That's, those are the easy ones, but it's the other ones. And that's what makes a great coach is the ones that had a hard time.

, that had to play the single the double a before they got to the triple a. And then all of a sudden they We're the last one pick or they got cut. They've been there. They have that experience. And so they have that compassion that they will come across and that empathy to say, don't give up.

Yeah. You're just not there yet. All right. And that's just the way 

Susan: it is. 

I come up from an academic background where there isn't this emphasis on character building. It's like, , you got the question right or you didn't get the question right. Especially, , when you're talking about graduate students and, , kids in their 20s.

And the, and the, or the professors who are stars coming all the way up, they're not always the best teachers because they didn't struggle, they don't know what it, , this is their subject matter. This is the thing that they're most passionate about in the world. They don't understand what it means to not understand this.

They've never had the moment where it's like, I have no idea what's going on. The people who end up being professors, they just know it intuitively. Like, it just always made sense to them. So those are the most of the professors, but occasionally you'll get a professor who struggled.

And, and those are the ones who have an unconventional background, I know one of my good friends is a professor. And she didn't go to university until she was in her mid to late twenties. She had she was working in bars, she had no great ambitions and she went to school and then turned out she did really well and somebody mentored her and encouraged her.

And that's when she became, she went to graduate school and then her family hadn't, didn't understand what was happening. Because they, when she went to her master's, they said, I don't understand you. You already went to university. Where are you going again? And then when she went for a PhD, it was like, I've, I'm even more confused.

Aren't you done yet? . And now she's, she's an amazing professor and she is one, one of the few like senior professors who does really well teaching introductory classes. . So your typical professor, what your teaching evaluations look like is that you get the best scores from the fourth years.

And you get your worst scores, and the lower you go in years, you're, the worse your teaching evaluations get. There's two reasons for this. One is you're more passionate about the upper year stuff. It's closer to, , your research area. Also, by the time you get to fourth year, the weaker students have been weeded out, 

so these are the kids who are also passionate, so that's why your scores go up. This woman, she has the high scores in the fourth year, and so they put her in the first year expecting her scores to go down. Her teaching evaluations went up. So never, you never see this, but that's because she, she doesn't have the classic background.

She has a different context. She comes from a different place.

Dave: , what's interesting is that I really liked that story, Susan. 

You got me thinking about , the tryouts and we're just talking about evaluation of the tryouts. Well, I remember saying to Christie, my wife we were engaged.

And I said, we need to do what's next. And she goes, well, what do you mean? I said, we're going out for dinner and we're going to pick our date because the first thing that people say, oh, you're engaged. What's the next question, Susan? 

Susan: When's the wedding? When's 

Dave: Yeah, when's the wedding? I always hear people, Oh, we don't know yet, maybe next year, , maybe ten years, because, whatever, 

and, I always said, , that's going to be the next question. So we sat down, we picked our date, May 11th, and I said, Oh, you just had your anniversary. We did. Yes, we did. Happy anniversary. So, well, thank you so much. 21 years. So what's, what's interesting is this. What's next is that when a couple gets married and then it's always the moms, the dads, the grandparents, or whoever, when are you having kids?

, and I know that can be very stressful for everyone, but if you actually talk about it before. , these people ask you and you have an answer, whatever that answer is, we're going to focus on work, we're going to build a house, , we're going to build a house, we're going to buy a house, whatever, whatever it is, have an answer.

, I think the worst answer is to have, I don't know.

So with the tryouts it's like, what's next, what is next? And we're talking about the empathy for the kids on how are we going to cut these kids? What lesson can we give them? What experience can we give them?

Cause it could be straight up, even when you get to the pros. This is the last thing you want to hear, look at the Toronto Maple Leafs, , if they say to the head coach, Sheldon Kennedy, we're cutting you, you're fired, no one wants to hear they're fired, or they're going to say Austen Matthews, we're trading you, but no one wants to hear that, , or we're sending you down to the minors, , so how do we prepare that individual so that when we get it.

on her own and we're facing with these life experiences. Susan, we're cutting down. We're going to let you go, , whatever it is, , you're like, that's fine. I know I can handle it. , cause we've worked and nurtured these kids how to handle adversity, , 

and then you have your hockey team.

What's next when you pick your hockey team, what are you going to say to the hockey team? What is your goal? What is your focus? What is your vision for the year? And , what are we striving for? It's really kind of being prepared. So there's a lot more than just a tryout. It's those next steps.

 So then when those parents come to you and go, okay, coach, Susan, we've made your hockey team I guess we're expecting one practice a week. And you're like, Hmm I'm not too sure what we're doing. I'll get back to you on that one. Or you'd be like, this is what we're going to be doing this year.

We're going to be getting one extra practice. We're going to be doing this. We're going to be doing that. We're going to try and have, , maybe two tournaments, one in house, I mean, one in town and maybe one out of town. And you have a player, you have a, an actual plan and you can say, I just want to let you know that it's going to be an additional fee of X dollars to play on this hockey team.

And maybe that's important to tell the parents before you even try it out. Because some parents be like, we go skiing every weekend. But not for us. We're out of here. We just. We wanted to play better hockey, not sign up for world , dominance of hockey, , or whatever it is. And then some other parents are like, that's all you have.

I want to skate 10 times a week, , , it's, it's both that preparation. So anyways that's, that's what kind of popped in my mind when you were talking there. So.

Susan: Yeah, yeah. And that has to do with alignment, ? You're talking about what do people, and that's what we're going through with our team that we're trying to stand up, so we have, it's a brand new select team, so there are no incumbents. Greenfield, anybody who shows up has a chance of getting on, which is great.

Never the case, so we're gonna have kids who are coming up from house league who've never played select before and they're the expectations of those parents are or even the kids It's very different from kids who are coming down from single a they've done single a for years the kids are This, I think, is a really interesting year.

The U14, U15 year, there's a lot of things going on and so they're coming down because they're fed up with hockey, or they despise hockey, or what, , they've, they've had enough, or their kids are getting more physical in single A. Or the play is getting more physical. I know body checking is still not allowed, but , the kids, the size difference between some of the kids who've had their growth spurt versus who haven't is, is more pronounced.

And so I think those all feed into a lot of movement in this U14, U15 years. And so the, , the single A player coming down has been doing, I don't know. six times a week, three practices, two or three games, , up to six times a week, at least four times a week. And they're coming down and they go, Oh, one practice, one game.

 I think I want a little more. 

Dave: . . When you get the kids that are entering high school , I think grade nine is one thing, but the. Grade 11 to grade 12, you'll see a lot of kids make a decision who are playing A and AA, potentially may come back to select.

, maybe to play with their friends before going off to university. Maybe they realize that hockey may not be in the cards for them. But they still want to play hockey and be active and be with their friends, which is still very important. And, , prepare, maybe have better grades as they move forward.

Because what we know with the GTHL setting up their schedules those kids that are playing grade 11 and grade 12, the games are late. They're late at night and they don't get home to after midnight and it makes it really hard to get up the next day to go to high school. So where some of the select games are on the weekends, , Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so it's a little bit more easier on the schedule and allowing you to have better time to study as well.

Susan: So I heard this statistic, I might have the exact number wrong, but like 70% of kids drop out of recreational sport by the time they reach high school. Have you heard this? 

Dave: No, I haven't. That's, 

Susan: it's new. It's high. It's high. And so and the number one reason that they drop out, they're not having any fun.

They're not having fun anymore. And there was a, there was an awareness campaign organized by, we'll have to, I'll add a link to this. But they, there's a campaign with a website with words to say in a, in a video. And it's called the car ride home. What happens in the car ride home is that the dad or the mom starts giving advice to the kid, you're laughing.

Dave: Oh, of course. 

Susan: The kid is sitting in the back, they're tired. Their legs probably hurt from how hard they've been playing, and they're probably not even finished sweating yet. And the dad is saying, or the mom, they're saying, , Is that the best you can do? You gotta skate a lot harder than that.

You owe it to yourself to do the best job possible. I saw you take all those shots on that, and you keep pulling to the left. How many times do I have to tell you to stop doing that? And it's like, is that fun? So, that was that campaign. 

Dave: Yeah, it's interesting, , when you talk about fun, maybe the evaluation from these kids should be described fun in hockey, , and then on the reverse side, , what is not fun, , just simply, 

so I think we're all very good at pointing out what's not fun, so you have a coach, the coach walks in and says, Susan. You're not doing X, Y, and Z, , and , he goes around the room and she points out to everyone in the room what they're not doing. So they've already been grilled, , it's so easy to be pointed out.

Now I'm painting a picture that every coach does this and they don't. So please, , I want everyone to know that not all coaches are like this, but , when you get in the car, parents are parents. They just want what's best for their, for their kids. And. , some parents don't know what to say, so they don't say anything, and maybe that's the best, 

that's the best. And then you have other parents that feel they know all and need to tell all. I've been around those parents, and they don't know all, and they should not be telling all. And I don't know. It's interesting. You know, what is the best formula? I'm not sure what it is.

But, , I think the kids already know when they screw up. , when they spill the milk, when they drop the Cheerios, when they, they know they screwed up. When they, when they pass the puck to the other team and it goes in that, they know they screwed up. They feel it right away. 

Susan: Yeah. 

Dave: They don't need to replay this .

Why didn't you look? Why didn't you get your head up? Why didn't you skate behind the net? Why didn't why didn't why didn't why didn't 

Susan: there's another thing that's going on in this age group is that they're hitting puberty, and puberty is this time of increased self awareness. This , in psychology they, There's a brain reorganization that happens and people who don't have the self awareness that, , they're just not very socially adjusted.

You have all this teenage angst coming on at the same time. So they're worried about what other people think. And then, , you've got the parents. Doing all of this stuff and, and, and it all feeds into it. . So I used to be one of these parents. So I would be driving on the way to the game. No, not on the way home, but on the way to the game.

It's like, okay, I want you to skate really hard and I want you to do this. And it's like, and, and I would make Leo cry and I felt really bad. . But I'm just trying to help. And I said, this isn't, this isn't working. This is like your thing earlier saying, this isn't working. I got to do something different.

And so I decided that I would do only positive reinforcement. I would say, this is something that I learned from Respect in Sports. I did the Respect in Sports parents course at that point. And the words that they give you to say are, I'm proud of you. I really like watching you play. . And so I started using those words.

This is actually, it's good content. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. Even the respect in sports activity leaders, that was a really good course as well. And so, , on the way home I would, or, or anytime we talked about hockey, it's like,

I like watching you play hockey. I enjoy it. I'm proud of you.

And now the car ride home is his favorite part, especially now that I coach him and I have things to say about specific parts of his performance. . And so after a practice or after a game, he can't wait to get in the car. And he says, how'd I do? How'd I do? And I'll tell him, Oh, remember that time, , we're in the second period and you were down at the boards and you were fighting for that puck.

You were in there for a good 30 seconds. I'm so proud of you. You didn't give up. You just kept going after it. You started at one end of the boards and you went into the other and you, you really fought for that puck. Or there'd be other and this other thing that you did, that was awesome.

And he'll ask me like three times in the car ride home. It's like, how did I do? And I'll tell him, . I'll tell him what I just said. And they'll ask you again, how did I do? It's like, Oh, I'm so proud of you. , you are so fast when you chase down that guy and then he'll ask me again, like a third time and I'll tell him the same thing again.

And it's like rain for plants, it's like oxygen. It's like he, he lives for this. Some kids, they don't need, I think every kid needs it, but some kids really need it. . He's that he just thrives on this and, and I think that's, that's made a big difference in how much he enjoys hockey. And that's a lot of his drive for how much hockey he wants comes from him.

. He. He's going to, he wants to be on select. So we're going to go do select and, and we'll see where, where that leads. And, and he, he's a late bloomer, he didn't want to play select when he was seven. He wanted, he, he wants to play select now. And I think it's related to this it's related to the positive reinforcement.

It's also related to how much I'm involved in the hockey. 

Dave: Mm hmm. I really like that story, Susan. The kids were open up to you when they know that they're being loved and connected. Humans want connection. And I think that's just really very simple. But think about it. If your dad or your mom or anyone yells at you, how much are you going to open up to that person

on the reverse, you won't. You go to the games. We all go to the games because we love watching. If you didn't like watching, you wouldn't show up. That's very simple.

So with my daughter, I've really had to learn this because, , I cast a little bit of a shadow, , , cause hockey is my, not only the game I played and, but also that's what I do for a living, so.

And I said, I say to Darcy I love watching you play. Just go out there and have fun. , that's all I say to her. In the car ride there, I have to hold myself back because I got a million things I want her to know so she can be successful on that ice. I think all parents are the same way, 

and, but I just say, honey, I love you. I love watching you play. You just go out there and just work your hardest. And I said, would you like a, a super power pill, , to make you skate faster and I give her this chocolate almond. And so the next time she jumps in the car, she gets so excited. Hey dad, I need a super power pill, ?

So she looks forward to this chocolate almond. And then after the game. She don't give a rat's ass about her dad, , it's all about her friends, , running around the rink and playing all that. And she's always sad when we got to go. And when we get in the car, especially after a game, she goes.

Are we going to get a sundae, , cause I always buy her a sundae afterwards. But what's interesting is this, is that when I keep saying to her, I love watching you play and then she will open up more knowing that I'm connected to her rather than me saying, do you know, you should have done this, this, this, and this.

Oh, she's just going to clam up in the back and watch her iPad because I want her to open up. I want her to know that she's in a safe place to talk about her hockey. And the best person to talk to, or one of the best people to talk to is the parent. And cause you, you can go back and forth on what they feel and what you saw.

 Because maybe there was no way out. Maybe there is no other option that you had in that play or whatever. Or that other player was just so freaking good that, , there's not much you could have done in that situation. I think that conversation opens up a lot easier when you start with anything of endearment of, I love watching you play.

And you just got to bite your tongue. And wait, sometimes that's the hard part. That's the hard part. My dad was unique. It wasn't until after university or during university, , I said to him, oh, you never taught me anything growing up. And what was interesting is that he got another parent on the team to buddy buddy with me.

And he told that parent, can you tell Dave to skate more with the puck? Can you tell Dave more to shoot more? Can you tell Dave to do this? And then my, this buddy parent used to go, Troms, you made me feel really good all the time. Get all this skill and speed. Gotta use it, man. You know how you skate around?

Don't get so close. You know, do this, this, and this. Is really my dad talking. 

Susan: That's amazing. That's amazing. 

Dave: You know, it chokes me up a little bit only because he's not here today to watch Darcy play, but. 

Susan: But this is where we started this conversation, ? . Where we as parents or as partners, we don't say things.

And sometimes in the beginning, , sometimes it's bad that we don't say things, but sometimes it's okay that we don't say things.

Dave: That's right. That's right. Because it does come. 

Susan: So John Gottman, who is a famous relationship researcher. He says that relationships that are successful allow people to pull back in this way.

Like, , relationships that are, that aren't successful, they'll fight till every last detail is sorted out. It's like, , this thing was wrong. , this thing was wrong. And they'll like, , really finesse it. , you're clear, right? You're just a failure. You, you left the fruit stickers on the counter, 

and, and that's a, that's an unsuccessful relationship and relate and successful relationships. You give people the opportunity to look away when it's uncomfortable and when it's uncomfortable, you kind of let it go and you back off. 

Dave: Yep. And it's really hard with your child because you love them and you want to help them and you want to guide them and you want to teach them.

And sometimes you just need to wait and listen, , yeah. And when they know they're being loved, they'll come, , they'll come, but you just have to keep saying it all the time. Not once. Right. So

Susan: good talk, Dave. Wow. 

Dave: Wow. That was amazing. Well, choked up. I don't know where to go from here.