Well now that I have been in the hockey director position for roughly two months I have begun to get my feet wet. To be completely honest I am extremely enthusiastic about what the future holds for NCYH. From the organizational stand point of things we are moving in the right direction and to continue on this path I have pin pointed three areas that as members of the organization you will need to help with.
As it is the off season (and I hope you all are enjoying your time away from the rink and getting your families recharged for the up coming season) I have not had the opportunity to talk with the majority of you on many topics. One of these topics that some of you have contacted me about is coaching. Here is where I stand in regards to coaching. Lets face it Northern Colorado is not a hot bed for youth hockey coaches, but what we do have is a tremendous amount of support from people who have coaching experience in other sports. What you have is a commitment from me to help develop the coaches that we do have into becoming excellent HOCKEY coaches. The way I see things, is that NCYH is only as good as the coaches we put in place to develop our young men and women into not only good hockey players but more importantly into exceptional people in our community.
I understand that there are some concerns with coaches from past years, but I am not one to dwell on the past. We have to move forward and play with the cards we are dealt. I am going to make myself as accessible to our coaching staffs and help them help there teams. One thing that is apparent to me from talking to last years coaching staffs is that we have a great group of guys that want to learn and want to do the right things necessary to helping make NCYH a successful hockey program. What more could a guy ask for? In the past (I hate talking about the past) there seemed not to be a great deal of organizational structure and guidance for our coaches. I am currently developing a organization wide philosophy that I will communicate to our coaches. Along with developing a philosophy I am opening up the lines of communication with our coaches and trying to let them know that I am here to help them and that we as coaches need to use one another as a resource as well. What better resource is there than someone else who you share a common goal with? As coaches we need to look at the up coming season as a positive opportunity to make a difference.
In terms of a pecking order for a successful season PARENTS you are next on the list. We need all of our parents here at NCYH to have a positive attitude towards there child’s experience. You may think that talking negatively in amongst your teams’ parents will not affect the children’s performance, but IT DOES. If the kids are constantly hearing negative talk about the outcome of a game, a coaches decision etc it eats its way into the locker room. If players are going into a game thinking that they don’t stand a chance or that their coach doesn’t know a thing about hockey we are going to be fighting an up hill battle all season long. WE ALL NEED TO KEEP A POSITIVE OUTLOOK on things. After all youth sports is about teaching kids teamwork, self confidence, self worth, the value in work ethic and most importantly giving them a chance to get a little exercise in a fun environment. In 1989 Lapchick’s Institute for Sports in Society stated that there are approximately 30,000,000 youth involved in sports and of those only 198 would ever make it to the professional level. That was nearly 20 years ago so these numbers could have only gone up making it even more difficult to “make it”. I guess what I am trying to say is that lets not over look why our son or daughter is involved in sports. If any of our kids make it to the pros we should all feel extremely fortunate for having been able to watch or play along side that child.
-Aaron Grosul
