Congratulations! You and your child are now proud members of Team Whereverville! You have purchased all the gear, set up those private lessons, reorganized your entire life and possibly refinanced your house to pay for all of it and now you are ready for that first practice! Your little Gretzky is on their way now.
Hold up. If you read that last line and didn’t think to yourself, my kid is not the next coming of Wayne, then please, for the sanity of the other parents around you, read on!
Coaches Are Usually Volunteers
This one is so easy to forget, especially when you might be spending the equivalent of a down payment on a house for your child to play this season so you feel like you should be getting NHL level training for your little record setter. You are, in fact, getting the same level of training nearly every NHL player received. Most of those players were also trained at this level by a volunteer or part time coach who played when they were kids and might still play in a beer league. Their coach was probably mom or dad who just wanted to help build the love of the game for their kids and other kids their age. Go ahead! Look it up.
Hockey coaches at the local level are incredible. The few that are not volunteers are making next to nothing to wrangle 10-15 kids around the ice and teach them this sport we all love. If you have ever tried to get ten 7 year old kids to listen, you know this is no easy task. Now imagine signing up to do it for six or seven months straight. We have to remember as parents that these coaches are certified by USA Hockey and hopefully teaching using the ADM model or their governing association to coach our kids.
With that being said, they are still humans and no matter how much they try to always do the right thing or keep things “fair” for the kids, there will be a kid that gets more ice time, or gets away with a penalty and they will ask your kiddo to play a position that you don’t want them to play. Trust them. Don’t assume that they are trying to hold your sweetie back or prevent them from learning or growing. That is not why they are there and they are not thinking about how to hinder your child’s career, I can promise you that.
Say Goodbye to Holidays and Money
One of the most shocking things for me was that I had inadvertently given up pretty much every holiday weekend. Labor Day BBQ? Nope, my kid has a tournament. Thanksgiving, Christmas, President’s Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day? Sorry, my kid has hockey and I will be spending Christmas Eve in an Outback Steakhouse. Seriously, even my wedding anniversary which is not during a holiday weekend has been consumed by hockey. Tournament in Nashville with fifteen 10 year old boys? Sure, sounds “romantic”. The only holiday I have managed to keep so far is 4th of July and I consider myself LUCKY for that.
Your family will think you have lost your damn mind to spend all of your holidays on the road. If you had asked me 8 years ago if I would even consider what amounts to an after school activity taking up all of my holidays, I would have told you where to go. Those traditional family holidays were far too important to me to give up for my kids hobby. But oh, when you see the absolute joy in their faces and fall so in love with watching them play, it certainly does not seem like much of a sacrifice. Besides, if you are like me you would rather pass on most of the “family” holiday traditions anyway. I mean, who wants to see their crazy old uncle get drunk in the first place? Consider yourself off the hook. You have hockey.
You won’t have any money to spend on holidays anyway after you pay for the “Stay to Play” hotel rooms. This is a fun (not fun at all) way for the tournaments to make a little extra money. They work with a hotel or various hotels in their area to negotiate a “deal” rate. There are ALWAYS cheaper options going direct to a hotel or through a discount website, but you can’t do it, you have to book through that room block in order to meet the stay to play requirement from the tournament. You don’t stay, you don’t play.
Not all tournaments handle it this way, but there are quite a few. When you are trying to buy Christmas presents and find out you have to also pay $150 for 4 nights in a hotel, you will be trying to figure out how to convince your kid that his hockey tournament is his Christmas present and Santa brought him hotel soaps. Prepare yourself now and if you get lucky and don’t have a stay to play tournament this year, congratulations! One last thing, make sure you pick up a travel knee hockey set if your kids are under 12. Kids playing knee hockey in the hallway of the $150 per night hotel is how we pay them back for their $150 per night fee!
Invest In Great Protection
I can tell you that when you start looking at gear options there are so many it will make your head explode, especially if you are like me and did not play hockey growing up. You can certainly start with the free gear you might get with an NHL Learn to Play program if you are near a city with a pro team and that would get you through until you hit 10U hockey.
Once you get into 10U,or what experienced parents call it… Squirt hockey (can’t imagine why they would want to get rid of Squirt, Pee Wee and Midget as division names) you need to consider spending a little more on better protection. My oldest is 5 feet tall and 115lbs and plays against kids that are his same age, but 60lbs. They are not allowed to check at this age, however, they do get knocked down, run into each other, and I have seen more than one child get the air knocked out of him. Without great protection, that becomes a broken rib very quickly.
I have no intention of trying to tell you what gear to buy. There are many great options, not only from the big names like Bauer and CCM, but there are some great new entries into the market that should be considered as well. The great news is that you can generally try on gear, and have your child check it out if you are close enough to a pro shop. I do suggest being cautious though because each brand makes their product differently. You don’t want to learn the hard way like we did that Graf and Bauer skates are completely different and have your experienced player unable to skate because the rocker was so drastically different. Though that did make for a pretty funny practice.
Get to Know Your Hockey Family
Hockey family is a strange beast. I remember starting our first team and thinking I was not going to be one of those crazy hockey moms. You know who you are! You have the cup, the t-shirt, the bumper sticker proudly professing your passion for being a hockey mom. That was not going to be me. I was just going to go, proudly watch my kid and leave. Well, it never works out that way. I made it to our first tournament, and was friendly with everyone, but had not taken the time to really get to know them. Then, something hysterical happened, and the team made a run for the banner, and suddenly we were nearly inseparable.
You will experience this incredible feeling of unity when you are cheering your kids on to the same goal. It doesn’t matter which kid scored that goal or that the goalie had help from another kid. You will see them work together to achieve the goal. They will cheer each other on and comfort each other during heartbreak. You will wonder where they learned to even do this. You will laugh. Hysterically. You will cry. Quietly so the kids don’t see it.
You spend your holidays together, your weekends, your evenings and early mornings. The hockey family you make each year will stay with you, very possibly for life. They may not always be on your team, they may not even always play hockey, but once you experience the highs and lows of a hockey season with these people, you will forever feel like they are family. Your life will be better for it, although sometimes it comes with the same level of drama that comes with a normal family (I use the term normal very loosely).
This family will guide you to the newest gear, best local coaches, and coolest new camps. They will be there to answer questions, pick up your kid when you are late and help to tie skates and fill water bottles. You will come to rely on them and your kids will be friends too. If your experience does not go like this, I recommend you take steps to make it happen because it can completely make or break a season not just for you, but for your player.
#DontBeAStatDad
Ok, so you are probably wondering what that means. It means, don’t be the parent who thinks their kid IS actually the next coming of #99. He might be, but he probably isn’t. You won’t know for many many years, and all you will do in the meantime is make parents hate you and probably eventually your child. You want to track how many goals or assists your kid got? Great! Do it. Track the number of shots blocked? Get on it! What you don’t need to do is tell all the other parents about it. They don’t care and they think you are crazy. Full on BANANAS!
We knew one parent who loved to tell us their child’s plus/minus after every 8U house league game. Bragged about it! Listen, I am positive the coaches are not tracking this and no one ever got an NHL contract in 8U House League, not even the Great One! So take it easy. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Tell your kid those stats don’t matter, what matters is they are having FUN! In the end, that is what we all really want for our kids, right? Have fun and work hard. That is exactly what travel hockey teaches these kids and exactly what I am paying for.
This sport is amazing and I hope you have fun in your travel hockey season. The places you will go and the experiences your kids will have will last a lifetime. Make sure you schedule in something fun in every location you go to if at all possible. It’s worth every extra minute of drive time.
If you have any other tips for new parents, or great travel stories, please leave them in the comments. If you would like to stay up to date on the camps and tournaments we do, subscribe to our newsletter too!
