I coached amateur hockey for 22 years. This included from Mites through Midget. a Junior B franchise and college club hockey. I also officiated through those years. Today my legs are shot, but I have many memories and stories.
Coaching Mites I convinced the other two Mite coaches to share their ice time. While this gave each team three times as much time on the ice, it required a ton of preparation. We divided the ice into thirds and ran the practices crosswise. Many coaches don’t realize that you don’t need a full sheet of ice to train on. I learned early from Bob Johnson, coach of University of Wisconsin many secrets of good coaching. Bob won three NCAA championships, was coach of the national and Olympic teams, and Calgary and Pittsburg in the NHL.
In my third year with the Mites one of my players ended up in sports Illustrated, Trent Grabow. WE also won the State Championship that year, the finals played in Pekin IL. Leaving the ice after the trophy presentation I was accosted by a couple of parents who had been sitting in the stands with their stop watches complaining about their son’s ice time. This probably explains why I moved up to coaching Midgets who could drive themselves to the practices and games.
I always stressed at the start of the year in a meeting with the parents that their job was to applaud their kids. The kids knew more about their mistakes than the parents. Some parents never got the message. Riverview Icehouse had a strange feature, not necessarily intended. In the players boxes you could hear many of the conversations going on in the stands. For the most part it was funny and entertaining. Sometimes not so. During one of my high school teams games one of my players came off the bench and yelled up to the stands “Mom, shut the f— up!”
More stories and tale in the future
