To be honest, and as I mentioned on the About page, I didn’t grow up playing organized hockey. We only had the frozen parking lot at the local pool, and only when it was cold enough to be able to play. As my daughter progressed in hockey, I became more aware that I had no idea what the USA Hockey coaching philosophy was all about. To become a more informed parent I started looking at the USA Hockey website and found some reasonable information on the process and what the kids should be learning at the various age levels. But my curiosity got me. I figured why not run through the coaching process and see the videos and materials they present to coaches, and here we are. Through a series of events, I ended up having to help as an assistant coach in the later part of our season, and eventually had to take over as head for the final weeks of our season. One of the other dads joked that I went from a spectator to running the scoreboard to assistant to head coach in a matter of months, which I still find funny. I didn’t mean for that to happen, it just did.
USA Hockey Certification
As mentioned in the post on Tier Classifications, some coaches at the Tier II and Tier III levels are volunteer coaches and may or may not to go through USA Hockey Coaching Certification. This will be driven by the league as well as the program. NIHL, as an example, requires that all Team Officials (defined as non-players on the bench during a game aka coaches) must have the appropriate certification level as defined by USA Hockey and AHAI.
Assuming you either are required, or just want, to become certified the process is quite simple. Most of what is required can be done so in an on-demand learning format. For me it felt like a 10-to-12-hour commitment in total, spread out across many sessions (and a great way to spend time while at the rink during practice). Your first stop is the USA Hockey Coaching Certification site located here – https://www.usahockey.com/coachingcertification. The process as laid out on the USA site does quite well to describe the steps, but I’ll repeat them here with commentary from my experience.
Certification Steps
- Register for USA Hockey (https://membership.usahockey.com/) – if you’re playing on an adult league team you have already done this as it is required to be added to the team roster.
- Complete the background check (https://www.usahockey.com/backgroundscreen) – this process takes a few days with a cost of $30. Check with your club to see if this and any other fees are reimbursable if you join the coaching ranks.
- Complete the SafeSport training (https://www.usahockey.com/safesporttraining) – you will complete a refresher version of the course in subsequent years until you are notified you need to re-complete the core version of the course.
- Complete the age-specific training modules – these are broken into 8U/10U/12U and so on. For me I took the 8U, 10U, and 12U trainings just to see what had changed between them. These are the on-demand videos with quizzes interlaced. Warning, some of the content between age groups is the same.
- Complete the “Level” Coaching Clinic. Since I completed mine in 2021 it was virtual, although was fairly well run. I got a lot out of that just in the peer/pod discussion groups and heard from new coaches to seasoned coaches who were getting into a certified program for the first time. This will need to be completed by 12/31 of the season you are coaching.
Once all of this is complete you will be assigned a Coaching Education Program (CEP) number for a Level 1 certification. In subsequent years, assuming you continue, you will move through Levels 2-5 of certification and optionally complete the age-specific modules for the age levels you’ll be coaching.
Certification Renewals
Not much to say here as it is a straightforward process. You will renew SafeSport (refresher or core depending), take any additional age-specific modules as needed, and attend the next Level Coaching Clinic. Renewals for SafeSport happen before the season starts, and the Coaching Clinic must be completed by 12/31 of the current season, so 12/31/22 for everyone renewing for the 2022-23 season.
My Own Personal Coaching Experience
I sprinkled in my experience in going through the certification process above, but I’d also like to share my takeaways from my brief experience on the bench this past year. I’ll start with the kids themselves:
- Every kid on a 10U team is at a different maturity level, and the gap between the largest and smallest kids on the team was wider than I would have expected. A wide range of both mental and physical capabilities that need to be accounted for.
- Speaking of maturity, it is hard to judge during the game when they are geared up and playing, but spending time with them off the ice (tournament weekends) makes you realize these are still young kids. Like still carrying stuffed animals around and watching kid’s cartoons young. They appear to be older and more mature when on the ice, so it is important to remember that they are still kids at the end of the day.
- Speaking of, they can sometimes be emotional (very emotional). They all want to win, in practices, games, in the hallway races at tournament hotels…when things don’t go well it is important to pick them up and get their confidence back up. They aren’t at the level yet where they understand that mistakes will happen, and you only learn by making them and correcting. Let them know that it is ok to make a mistake.
Let’s move on to what I assume is every coach’s favorite topic: the parents. As a coach there will be parents who strongly support you, some that are indifferent, and some that think everything you’ve done is wrong. I started teaching at DePaul University back in 2007 and I learned this lesson already, and feel I was ready for it, but – the best advice I ever received on this topic is that you can’t make all the people happy all the time. I think we could do better early in the season on expectation setting, and here are my ideas and thoughts on the topic:
- Setting expectations on the goals of the team and individual players will be for the season is important. The goal of youth hockey, being a late recruitment sport, is to make sure the kids are progressing and having fun while practicing and playing. It should be decided early in the season on how the team will be run – will your child get limited ice time during games in order to have a “winning” season, or will the ice time be equally distributed regardless of wins and losses? Should players missing practices see less ice time during games? These are all questions that need to be answered early in the season to properly set expectations.
- Standards should be set for parental behavior, and that includes behavior off ice, at practices, during games and tournaments, etc. Can’t believe I need to write this one, but it is also understandable that parents only want the best for their young player, so I understand the passion that some parents bring to these events. Let’s remember they are still just kids learning and growing at this point, and the goal should be for them to improve their skills in a supportive environment.
- I’m also guilty of this one, but try not to have “the talk” on the car ride home after a game – one which focuses only on the negative aspects of their play. I do think it is fair to ask, “what is one thing you think you did well in the game, and what is one thing you wish you would have done better”. That was my go-to line that helped balance positive accomplishments with where improvement was needed. No need to agree or disagree with your player’s assessment, and I would normally say “ok” to whatever her assessment was and not argue the point. After that exchange we talk about other things or listen to music which allows the player to decompress.
There is a final set of realizations and takeaways that don’t quite fit in the previous sections that I’d call “general” takeaways:
- The amount of time spent prepping for practices and games is higher than I thought. Making decisions on drills and lineups was more time consuming than I had expected.
- I learned the “second” rule, which is that you need to be able to explain things or provide feedback that roughly fits within the number of seconds that is the same as the player’s age. So, you basically have 9-10 seconds to make a point for 10U player, so get to the point immediately without a winding explanation.
- And finally, you need to take control of the team from day one. Setting expectations and the discipline tone early in the season is paramount. I found that players who were allowed to not pay attention during drill explanations early in the season were very difficult to bring back around. I’m not a big fan of punishment at the younger levels, but a stern warning followed by having to perform a few pushups in front of your teammates while they wait can go a long way.
One last thing I thought about following this past season is what can we do better? Or my “why don’t we do this” questions…
- One thing I rarely had while growing up was video reviews of a game or techniques. Granted, some of the baseball camps I attended started doing this in the 80’s and 90’s (yes, I’m dating myself), video of games (thanks to LiveBarn) for hockey is pervasive these days. I wouldn’t mind having a video review with the team of specific plays that 1) resulted in a good play to reinforce good habits, or 2) where plays had broken down to show players why and where they should be on ice. We did this informally in our own household, but I always made a point to show good and bad plays equally. We don’t do this at the 10U level, and maybe that’s ok, but I would have killed for this level of analysis as a young baseball player.
- I mentioned early season expectation setting above, but we also don’t have a lot of one-on-one discussions mid-season or even at the end of the season. I know there are a lot of involved hockey parents, so it may make sense to not only set expectation at the start of a season, but have a mid-season meeting, and an end of season meeting, that are mandatory. Mid-season would address concerns on progression or to reinforce the goals of the team with parents. End of season meetings would be helpful to discuss player progress, where improvement is needed, make recommendations on camps and clinics the player could attend if they so choose, etc.
So, if you’re thinking of coaching my recommendation is just go do it. It is one of the best, most rewarding things you can do to give back to the game.
