Your mission, coach, should you decide to accept it:  Take this group of immature, mostly self-centered, diversely skilled, hyperactive youngsters and get them to play as a unified team all committed to a common goal.  Accomplish this while maintaining the most important principle of coaching, do what is best for the team.  You will have plenty of support from your team parents who also want what is best for the team—as long as it is also best for their kid.

And that coach is where the battle line is drawn.

Whether you are an experienced former player or the one dad in the meeting that put his arm up at the wrong time, you are taking on a difficult adventure.  Those who told you it would be easy were lying.

Most of your training for this mission has already been completed through your playing days as a youngster.  Choose your methods wisely from those who coached you in the days before background checks and everybody gets a trophy.  As products of the “Bad News” Buttermaker School of coaching, the infamous Jack Reilly of “Mighty Ducks” fame or any number of coaches in between your techniques will be varied and distinct.   

Your next step to becoming a real coach will be to attend a USA Hockey coaching clinic.  This will occupy a minimum of six hours of your weekend listening to experienced coaches dictate a laundry list of responsibilities and requirements.  Those who are certain they already have learned enough from Barry Melrose and Don Cherry will surf the internet, dose off to sleep and generally learn nothing.   You will get a lot of good advice and a ton of great resources, but you won’t get a donut and cup of coffee. 

Tim Horton would be disappointed.

You will be lectured on the pitfalls of placing winning as a priority and persuaded to build skills and develop character.   To be successful you will need to write a coaching philosophy, set goals, schedule a parent meeting, organize practice plans and establish team rules.  As you hit the ice be sure to focus on skills, teach concepts, use stations, play small area games, utilize your assistants, but don’t waste ice time or have kids standing in long lines.  Be sure to challenge your best players, but not make it too difficult for the others.  By the end of the day you will be convinced there would be less responsibility if you worked for the FBI.

John Q. Parents will be your greatest enemy and your greatest asset; the challenge will be to determine the good guys from the bad.  They will disguise their faith and admiration for you in home baked cupcakes, free adult beverages at the local watering hole and bushels of sage advice.  At times you might feel like you are doing nothing right until you get an encouraging e-mail to make your day.

“Coach, perhaps it may be a good time for you to stop blaming parents, and take a hard look at yourself; your policies, your ethics, your lack of motivational tools, your poor attitude, your inconsistent reasoning, your poor decisions, and your inability to fully understand respect and true character building.”

Welcome to the world of coaching.

When the games begin there will be so many rose-colored glasses in the bleachers that you will be certain you are at a 3D movie theater.  You will see enough arms flailing to land a 747 as they yell out confusing instructions to your players and berate ten-year-old officials.    The talking behind your back will be so constant and loud you will swear that someone is always following you.  They will be your best friend one day and not speak to you the next all based on the precious minutes of playing time you allot their budding superstar. 

Twenty years from now they may still turn and look the other way. 

Some of these accomplices will demand you to win at all costs and others will expect you to play for fun.  If you are young you will be told you don’t have enough experience, if you are old you will be told you are “too old school.”  If you hold kids accountable and push them you will “too mean” and if you don’t you will be “too soft.”   If you play everybody equally you will be jeopardizing your best players NCAA scholarships and if you play them too much destroying the self-confidence of the rest. 

Pick your poison carefully—take your medicine quietly.

Let’s not forget about your primary duty, teaching your players the game of hockey.  Some come to you with dreams of the NHL in their eyes and others with visions of motel pools and pizza parties.  Some are hungry to learn the slap shot, others only hungry for the post-game snack.  Their physical and intellectual skills will be as varied as their shapes, sizes and attitudes.  Like a sixties variety show act, each player is a plate atop a pole and your job is to keep them all spinning at the exact rate their parents expect.

You will teach them the value of being unselfish and to play as a team, but dad will out bid you, promising five bucks a goal.  Respecting their teammates, opponents and officials will be a keystone of your philosophy, but each car ride home after a loss will erase your efforts. 

Quickly you will learn that when you win it is because the kids played great and when you lose it is because you are a moron.  Tie games are also your fault.  But it is not about wins and losses, it is about playing time and everybody wants more of it.  And just when you think you did a pretty darn good job of managing the game, it will be brought to your attention that Wayne got shorted forty-nine seconds of ice time.  Only death row inmates cherish minutes more than starry-eyed parents. 

Two weeks later when Wayne quits after his parents have convinced him he is being treated unfairly, it will be your fault.  Encouraging our kids to have the grit to persevere through adversity has been replaced by quitting in search of a new venue and the perfect experience.

Finally you get to experience all of this as a volunteer or if we pay you at all, it will be peanuts, unless of course you or one of your players are allergic to them, in which case we get a mom to bake something that meets the USDA Smart Snacks guidelines.

Life as a coach can indeed be never-ending mayhem, and after two years out of the head coach fire pit I realize I miss that bedlam, even the crazy parents.  Because the reality is most of your parental units will be great, but getting all of them on board—that is Mission Impossible!

Dan Bauer is a free-lance writer, teacher & hockey coach in Wausau, WI.  You can contact him at dbauer@wausauschools.org.