We are hockey parents, and volleyball parents too – although this blog focuses on hockey! We are the parents of two children, ages 11 and 13, who have taken different paths when it comes to sports. Our 11-year-old picking up the game of hockey around age 7 and our 13-year-old starting her volleyball career in middle school with her school’s team. She’s now playing club volleyball which offered her a more competitive environment in which to play, and I’m looking forward to the warm summer days in the park where we can work on our skills before next season. Our hockey girl is entering her first year of Peewees after playing a year of Mites and two years as a Squirt for the Chicago Stallions (co-ed) and on an All-Girls team as a 10U with the Wilmette Junior Trevians this past season. Somehow, I was also suckered into coaching hockey as well, which I will say has offered me way more insight into the game and how to better coach my own daughter as she progresses through her hockey journey.
Let me start by saying I’m more qualified to coach a baseball team or a volleyball club than a hockey team. I’ve played organized sports most of my life, playing baseball as a youngster through my Junior year of high school. The high school I attended is extremely passionate about baseball – our Freshman team went 25-0 and we finished 4th in State my Junior year after posting a 34-7-1 season (https://www.ihsa.org/Sports-Activities/Boys-Baseball/Records-History). The monthly newsletter is filled with all the former players and their college scholarship awards as they commit and updates on those who made it to the majors. But this all comes with a cost. After Sophomore year you were told you’d be playing baseball year-round, which sounds fun from the outside looking in. What you do not see is the two-a-days with weightlifting in the morning and practice after school, the countless hours of individual batting practice, or the sheer number of summer and fall league games you need to attend. Quite frankly, it burned me out, and like many others who have left a sport I left because it was no longer fun. That is something we need to make sure we do not do to our own hockey players (and volleyball) for sure!
So, I left baseball for our varsity high school volleyball team – ironically, I still recall signing the petition after baseball practice as my buddy Jeff came around with the clipboard so we could have a boys volleyball program at the school. Turns out it was a solid move because it gave me a new challenge and allowed me to love playing a sport again. For all the negatives I seem to have implied about my time playing baseball, it did teach me the concepts of teamwork and dedication, but mostly it was all those box jumps and sprints that gave me a decent vertical for a person my height. In fact, I’m almost sure the only reason I made the team was because I could dunk a volleyball with two hands and spent the rest of that year leaning the game. I continued my volleyball journey into college, playing for the University of Illinois-Chicago, where I both played and helped to run the men’s club team. I was a perennial pick for the MCVA (Midwest Collegiate Volleyball Association) all-star team, led the team in hitting percentage in 2 of my seasons with the club, and in my final season we placed 9th in the nation for D1/club volleyball programs. I kept playing in the United States Volleyball Association (USAV – https://usavolleyball.org) following college for the next 12-14 years – until I got too old.
You may be asking where my hockey playing experience is in that story? Well, we never had an opportunity to play organized hockey because it wasn’t a thing where I grew up. We could all skate. We had pond hockey every year when they would flood the parking lot at the local park district swimming pool, but that was it. I did pick the sport back up years ago and joined a few men’s leagues around Chicago – mainly to get active again, and was also a sport that didn’t bother all those knee injuries I suffered playing volleyball to badly. This re-intro to the game as well as my daughter playing, combined with my organized sports background, is what led me into the coaching realm this past season. Something I hope to be able to continue in the future.
So why did I start this blog? As mentioned in one of the first posts, I had a chance to sit back after this last fall season was over and contemplated all the things I learned, and had to learn, in the world of youth hockey. It has been a fun journey for me personally and something I enjoy, but I also searched for a similar site and just couldn’t find one…so I figured why not start one and see how it goes. Hopefully the new parents out there find some value in the posts and always welcome comments and advice you’ve picked up along the way.
I did it before Eminem btw