By Stephen Heisler
North American ice hockeys system of developing athletes has a very unique set of values and principles, especially when being compared to other olympic team sports. The top goal of the system of development has always been the National Hockey League. Players and parents have many choices along the way. Some of those choices require a ton of faith in the system, sacrifice, money, and in many cases, long term consequences. The debate concerning junior hockeys practice of pulling young teens from their home, to live and play far away, rages on.
Imagine a young boy has been playing hockey for a number of years on local teams and leagues. He does pretty well, coaches like his attitude, and his level of play continues to improve every season. At age twelve, he joins a new team that is very competitive, and the boys parents begin to spend the majority of thier spare time sipping bad coffee at cold ice arenas. The boy begins to stand out from the rest of the team, he has developed into a leader, and the coaches begin to expect more from him.
At age thirteen, other coaches and parents begin to freely give the parents a ton of advice. The boy needs to be playing in Canada, one coach says. Travel hockey is the way to go, another parent adds. The choices are difficult; the player is only in junior high school.
At age fifteen, the player is with a very serious bantam team. The coach schedules 5:00 AM practices each day before school. Every other weekend, the team is on the road, the costs associated with this team are entirely on the parents. Hockey has beome a heavy financial burden on the family. Yet the player has continued to exceed expectations, he continues to stand out from the rest of his team, and constantly is the best player on the ice. His parents begin to receive telephone calls and letters from various career advisors, maybe an attorney, and a number of teams from the Western Hockey League, the United States Hockey League, and Prep Schools. There are many choices, and a very big decesion.
The fifteen year-old boy is drafted by a team in the Western Hockey League. The parents have to make a choice that will affect the rest of his life. Is the boy really good enough to follow the major junior path to the National Hockey League? Maybe Tier II and a chance at a full schlorship to a university is the smarter choice?
What is the best path? That depends entirely on each player and their family. How is the boy doing academically? How is his family doing financially? Should he stay at home, and play locally, or should he be sent him to Canada, Iowa, or even Texas to play junior hockey?
A number of factors quickly come into play. The bottom line is that hockey is a business. What may be good for one player, will not be entirely perfect for every player. There lies the controversey.
Andy Maher is the Head Coach of the Springfield Junior Blues of the NAHL. Maher grew up in Minnesota. Hockey in Minnesota is almost as important as oxygen. The game is taken very seriously, and there are many opportunities for players to develop locally. Minnesota also has the best high school hockey system in the country. The focus is on academics, and players are limited as to the number of practices and games. Some feel that these limits retard development. Others feel that players have more then enough opportunities to grow on their own.
As a head coach, Maher spends much of his time keeping track of player prospects, and selling his program to parents and kids. As a native son of Minnesota, he understands the importance of the game and high school hockey. When asked about recruiting young under-grads, from his home state, he said, As far as recruiting undergrads goes, we try to stay away from that. We understand how important it is for kids to try to get to the state tournament. So unless a kid approaches us about leaving, we leave them alone.
Even in Minnesota, high school hockey is seeing players move to developmental programs before graduation. Other states like Alaska, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas have seen the level of play decrease because of the large number of prospects playing on teams like the Junior Blues. Now even USA Hockey has sanctioned high level super leagues that force youth teams to cross the country in order to face worthy opponents.
Jamie Russel is the head coach of the Michigan Tech University Huskies in Houghton, Michigan. Coach Russels Huskies play in the highly competitive Western Collegiate Hockey Association.
Coach Russels position on the developmental system is very clear. The current trend of players leaving home to play on select youth teams, sometimes these players are not even out of junior high school. Between the youth teams and seemingly endless number of Tier III Junior A leagues, the number of players leaving home has skyrocketed. When asked about the strengths and weaknesses of such programs, he responded, The number of games played is a strength. Leaving home too early is a big weakness. Why are kids in such a rush?
Players do have the option of finishing high school at home, than leaving for junior hockey, and Coach Russel feels that is the best path for his recruits. Russel was asked what has proven to be the best path for his players. He said, Players that play junior hockey after graduation from high school have plenty of experience. There is also the issue of player maturity. Russel was asked about the preferred age of incoming freshmen players. He said that the perfect age is twenty-one years old.
One of the other issues is the living situation for young players. Typically, junior players live with host families. There have been a number of problems over the years with inappropriate relationships being developed between players and host moms. The movie , about junior hockey in Canada, features a young Rob Lowe as an American player, trying to make it as a rookie in Canada. One of the story lines is about the housing situation. Every junior
hockey player in Canada and the U.S. knows about tea with Ms. McGill. Television shows like Sex in the City and Cougar town also glamorize the practice of older women with younger men.
Is the issue compounded by hockey? Yes. Boys will be boys. Older players, age eighteen to twenty, are going to do what they do. That is an adult choice. But the younger players, fifteen to seventeen, are in fact, still kids. The bottom line is this. USA Hockey and the Junior Council need to establish guidelines for underage players on junior teams. The extensive measures taken by Topeka may not be the same standards for a Tier III team in New York.
Let us face the truth. Junior Hockey is a business. At Tier I and II, the fan is the customer. At Tier III, the player is the customer. If a coach gets a reputation of being too strict, he will have a hard time the next season. If another coach promises and delivers a good time, well, you know how that is going to go. Guidelines and Rules for undergrads will protect the players and put all programs on an equal level.
Most parents will agree with the statement that parents are responsible for teaching kids about life and values and that junior hockey is for developing skills. There are significant developmental differences, emotionally and physically between players ranging from age fifteen to age twenty. When considering the potential for an absence of parental guidance and controls, there is a real possibility of kids getting led astray. The hockey community should not assume that sixteen and seventeen year-olds are as mature and grounded as eighteen to twenty year-olds.
Society treats adults much differently than underage children. There should be more concern about high school freshman learning about life on the road from nineteen and twenty year-old role models.
It is overly simplistic to just say that teenagers drink. So it doesnt matter where they are if they are doing it. Kids who have to face going home after being out with friends, having curfews with general parental guidance are likely to have much different behaviors than, otherwise supervised kids.
Looking at the top echelon of college teams they are getting their choice of the top players in the country. The rest of the teams are looking to junior hockey as a way of finding late developing players who are more physically mature and able to socially handle the change from life at home to a college life.
Without trying to choose sides and taking a look at the question as to what makes the most sense developmentally, there are some good questions to consider.
Parents must define development much more broadly than just player skills. They must include, the socialization of a persons development, a sense of community, the need and value for life long relationships and the sense of belonging to something that is connected to the community in ways very few of these businesses (and thats what these junior franchises are, businesses) can. The choice is difficult. This structure is so helpful and necessary in a childs development into an adult person.
What needs to be addressed is whether we as a society want to send our children away from family, friends and support systems they grew up with, for so narrow a perspective, as to become a better athlete. Keep in mind that these years are so critical to formation of an individual. This is particularly true considering that almost ninety-five percent of all junior players end up playing in the same pick-up type leagues twenty years later.
There is an inherent value in looking at the player development model from the learn to skate program on up and be open to recasting things in such a way that provides an optimum development of the whole person. Development of hockey skills, social maturation, physical maturation and emotional stability are of paramount value.
Dan Esdale is the chairman of USA Hockeys Junior Council, he is also the president of the Eastern Junior Hockey League. The EJHL has an excellent reputation of being one of the nations premiere developmental programs. The EJHL does a great job of preparing players for the next level. In most cases, that means
college hockey. As the junior councils chairman, he oversees the entire structure of the level of play, currently that is over two hundred teams playing at five levels of competition. He feels that there is confusion about the various competition levels and wants to simplify the system. In a discussion with AmericanJuniorHockey.com, Esdale was asked about the changes. There is an issue with too many teams branding and marketing themselves as equals to teams at higher levels, that is wrong and we want to eliminate the confusing. Esdale said. There are discussions about eliminating the sub-levels and forcing leagues to do a better job of marketing their individual brands, and not piggy backing off of other leagues. Esdale added. Essentially this will mean the end of the confusion. The structure will simply be Tiers I, II, and III.
What does this mean to the player and parents? The move should eliminate the guessing game as to which level of play a team or league is actually at. The move will also forced leagues to do a better job of monitoring academic and developmental standards.
Reg Pearless does not feel that the move does enough. Pearless, was the co-captain of the 1968-70 mens
hockey team (and 1989 Hall of Fame Inductee) at Bentley College. Pearless is also a dad. His son is currently in the junior hockey system as a 19 year-old. Pearless feels like the system is geared too much as a business and that the developmental portion of the game has giving way to the all mighty dollar. Parents are paying as much as $10,000 for a single season of play at the Tier III level. Pearless feels that is way too much. Teams have lost the value of what development is suppose to be. Pearless stated. These coaches and owners are recruiting players based on their ability to pay and not on their ability to play. He added.
Junior programs are not the only problem. The youth levels are also getting in on the money grab. Pearless has been able to witness the transition closely from his home in hockey-rich Massachusetts. Youth players are on multiple rosters and playing as many as one hundred games a year. That is just crazy, whatever happened to practice? He asks. When we grew up, we were excited about practice and maybe getting in a game a week during the season, now these kids get maybe a few practices, and up to four games a week, fifty weeks a year; that is insane. He adds.
USA Hockey has recognized the problem and has created the American Development Model to correct it. This is the overview taken from USA Hockeys site:
For starters, many athletes spend too much time traveling, competing and recovering from competition and not enough time preparing for it. Second, there is too heavy a focus on the result rather than the performance. This attitude leads to long-term failure, as coaches forgo the development of skills to focus on specific game tactics. And third, too many athletes are specializing too early on. An early focus on just one or two sports often leads to injuries, burnout and capping athletic potential.
The current system creates burnout, and ultimately a sharp decline in participation, leading to an overall decline in retention since 2000.
Former Team USA Olympic Coach Herb Brooks was famous for saying that, Great moments are born from great opportunities. Well, the American Development Model is the opportunity.
The American Development Model (ADM) is a USA Hockey managed model for developing players. It is important to note, that the model is not a rule change or a mandate. Many folks feel that it should be.
In conclusion, USA Hockey has a bit of housecleaning to take care of. Doing so would return the game to the kids. Today, coaches dominate the game. They are highly compensated, and have nudged their way into the oversight of the various levels of development.
One corrective measure would be to create an oversight committee from the leaders of the game. An education leader, a cross section of professional and college coaches, and player representatives from the professional, youth and junior levels, Such a committee could provide a buffer between those with a financial interest in the game, and the implantation of actual change.
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