Does it matter where you live?

[intothezone]

I keep hearing, "little Jonny and his family are moving to Edina". I understand Edina is a powerhouse when it comes to hockey. But my question is this... is it really necessary to up and move ones family to develop a hockey player? If so, what is wrong with the system?

[O-townClown]

To have this discussion, you really need to define "a hockey player". Is it better to be in Edina (your example) if the goal is for your kid to win a lot of youth games? Absolutely. Or should I say, absolutely as long as your kid makes the "A" team.

If the goal is to be a big goal scorer in the NHL, you can actually create a strong argument that it is better to be a top player from a lesser association. Provided they can get through the losses and likelihood that their linemates aren't anywhere near as good.

I don't think it is cut and dry. I don't know of any examples where kids moved to the traditional hockey communities as average or below players and became great. Robby Granato at Burnsville, Dan Plante at Edina, David Eddy at Woodbury, T. J. Oshie at Warroad...all these players were very good players before they moved.

[C-dad]

To have this discussion, you really need to define "a hockey player". Is it better to be in Edina (your example) if the goal is for your kid to win a lot of youth games? Absolutely. Or should I say, absolutely as long as your kid makes the "A" team.

Oh, I don't know. It seems that associations like Edina, Wayzata, Minnetonka, Stillwater, etc. win lots of B1, B2 and C games too.

[goalie'sdad]

if the goal is for your kid to win a lot of youth games? Absolutely. Or should I say, absolutely as long as your kid makes the "A" team.

Who would move to win more youth games? "Absolutely" Now that's funny I don't care who you are that is funny!

[Wrister]

So you move your family to Edina to play sports, so what. It is my understnding their schools are always ranked in the top five in the state and in the top 100 in the entire midwest for education as well. It sounds like a win/win.

[funmom]

I wouldn't say the goal is just for your kids to win youth games. I think you have to look at how the association is run. I live in an area with a crappy association and were all you get is dads coaching which leads to kids being on teams that they shouldn't be on and dads kid playing more then any other kid. We moved our kids to be in a better association and get better coaching and development. It was the best move we ever made!

[ThePuckStopsHere]

I wouldn't say the goal is just for your kids to win youth games. I think you have to look at how the association is run. I live in an area with a crappy association and were all you get is dads coaching which leads to kids being on teams that they shouldn't be on and dads kid playing more then any other kid. We moved our kids to be in a better association and get better coaching and development. It was the best move we ever made!

Hey FunMOM - Please share from which you came from and where you ended up?

[observer]

This is an important question and one that I’ve thought about a lot. It's not just a hockey discussion, or Minnesota one, but all sports and global.

Kids are all the same in 1st grade. A Minnetonka kid, a Fridley kid, a Dallas kid or a Stockholm kid. They're all the same.

It makes no difference if it's hockey, soccer or piano. Development occurs when the kids start their activities. It could be at the park or for a club. It has nothing to do with where you live except..... Development is based entirely on the dad or mom who coach the kids. One of your children can have a great leader while his younger brother does not. One child can have wonderful hockey, soccer and baseball coaches while the other does not. Burnsville can have an organization full of knowledable baseball coaches and Brooklyn Park may not.

Its unfortunate the entire system depends on special dads of 3rd grade boys but that's the way it's set up. Physically the kid in London can be just as good of a hockey player with the same opportunities and development as the player in Edina. But he doesn't have it.

Big associations have more and better qualified leaders. The kids, which are all the same, benefit. The coach in Fridley can run the same practice as the coach in Wayzata but he likely doesn't. Because of the culture in some communities, Edina and Roseau are hockey towns, they have bigger pools of experienced ex-players to draw from. More special 3rd grade dads.

It just means smaller communities, without the hockey culture, need to work harder. It requires the right type of parental leadership to start working with a young group of players and develop them over years. Without the right dads some kids don't have the same opportunity to develop as players as a player with fewer natural skills may have and that's the part that is unfair. It really only takes a few of the right parents to make things good for an entire association but there does have to be a few. Even solid associations have peaks and valleys based either on weak recruiting or one group of players, based only on luck, have better coaches than another group. Development of young athletes should not be contingent on luck. Keeping kids active in sports is a really important issue in society, globally, and shouldn't be left to luck of who got the good coach and who did not.

[Rick O'Shay]

I think I speak for the majority when I say "if you're thinking of moving just because of youth sports please don't move into my town!" Well unless your kid is really good and won't take my kids spot.......

[The Enlightened One]

You can see where the question comes from and where it is going by going to an association an watching kids progress over time. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy at about the second year of Squirts. The kids start off in Squirts adn are selected to the upper teams based on skill in some cases and who their daddy and or mommy is in others. Board member's kids and the donor's kids always make the A team. The rest of the kids are seeded onto the B teams. The Squirt A kids get top notch coaching with serious coaches who want to win and coach them that way. About half of the B kids get a fairly serious coach and the other half get a dad who wants to see his kid have fun. At the end of the year the A kids are markedly better, the sort of serious B kids are better and the other half had fun. The die is cast. The A kids are contacted and are pulled onto summer hockey teams while the B kids are scrambling to try to make it onto those teams but since they were a Squirt B kid they find slim pickings. Next fall the A kids who also played summer hockey are way better. Not many changes are made for the second year of squirts unless somebody has fallen out of favor with the "unbiased" selection committee (which is usually overseen by a board member to make sure that they don't have any issues that they need help with, like putting the wrong kid on the wrong team) or something like that. We now go to year two where it starts all over again except for the fact that the A kids have a head start so they get better by a larger amount. This continues until Bantams comes along. You can take two kids who are at the same level as far as skills and personality goes at the end of Mites and send them into this system and one will be a star (got selected for the A teams) and the other will be done playing hockey by Bantams.

A much better question that you need to ask before you make any moves is "what is the coaching like?" who coaches? Your kid can make a high school team from a Bantam B team if he has had good coaching and is willing to work at it. He can get placed onto the JV to get looked at and have a chance. OTOH, if your association leaves the PeeWee B and the Bantam B kids for dead and only keep them around so they have another revenue stream to help keep the costs down for the A kids then your kid is sunk.

Nobody should move to get their kid onto a different team unless they have a very good kid and are playing in one of those associations that is dropping off in numbers and is on it's way out. There are bunches of them that will trap your kid in place until they fail and until it is too late for your kid to get going. A better option is to move to a smaller to middle size association that is growing and hope like heck that your can get your kid onto the upper B team so that he has a shot at high school hockey. He won't make it onto an A team as those spots were filled a few years ago when the initial squirt evaluations took place but he can get close enough to try to make a leap from the Bantam B team.

[BadgerBob82]

Good grief!

[edgeless2]

You can see where the question comes from and where it is going by going to an association an watching kids progress over time. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy at about the second year of Squirts. The kids start off in Squirts adn are selected to the upper teams based on skill in some cases and who their daddy and or mommy is in others. Board member's kids and the donor's kids always make the A team. The rest of the kids are seeded onto the B teams. The Squirt A kids get top notch coaching with serious coaches who want to win and coach them that way. About half of the B kids get a fairly serious coach and the other half get a dad who wants to see his kid have fun. At the end of the year the A kids are markedly better, the sort of serious B kids are better and the other half had fun. The die is cast. The A kids are contacted and are pulled onto summer hockey teams while the B kids are scrambling to try to make it onto those teams but since they were a Squirt B kid they find slim pickings. Next fall the A kids who also played summer hockey are way better. Not many changes are made for the second year of squirts unless somebody has fallen out of favor with the "unbiased" selection committee (which is usually overseen by a board member to make sure that they don't have any issues that they need help with, like putting the wrong kid on the wrong team) or something like that. We now go to year two where it starts all over again except for the fact that the A kids have a head start so they get better by a larger amount. This continues until Bantams comes along. You can take two kids who are at the same level as far as skills and personality goes at the end of Mites and send them into this system and one will be a star (got selected for the A teams) and the other will be done playing hockey by Bantams.

A much better question that you need to ask before you make any moves is "what is the coaching like?" who coaches? Your kid can make a high school team from a Bantam B team if he has had good coaching and is willing to work at it. He can get placed onto the JV to get looked at and have a chance. OTOH, if your association leaves the PeeWee B and the Bantam B kids for dead and only keep them around so they have another revenue stream to help keep the costs down for the A kids then your kid is sunk.

Nobody should move to get their kid onto a different team unless they have a very good kid and are playing in one of those associations that is dropping off in numbers and is on it's way out. There are bunches of them that will trap your kid in place until they fail and until it is too late for your kid to get going. A better option is to move to a smaller to middle size association that is growing and hope like heck that your can get your kid onto the upper B team so that he has a shot at high school hockey. He won't make it onto an A team as those spots were filled a few years ago when the initial squirt evaluations took place but he can get close enough to try to make a leap from the Bantam B team.

This actually makes sense to me.

[SECoach]

You can see where the question comes from and where it is going by going to an association an watching kids progress over time. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy at about the second year of Squirts. The kids start off in Squirts adn are selected to the upper teams based on skill in some cases and who their daddy and or mommy is in others. Board member's kids and the donor's kids always make the A team. The rest of the kids are seeded onto the B teams. The Squirt A kids get top notch coaching with serious coaches who want to win and coach them that way. About half of the B kids get a fairly serious coach and the other half get a dad who wants to see his kid have fun. At the end of the year the A kids are markedly better, the sort of serious B kids are better and the other half had fun. The die is cast. The A kids are contacted and are pulled onto summer hockey teams while the B kids are scrambling to try to make it onto those teams but since they were a Squirt B kid they find slim pickings. Next fall the A kids who also played summer hockey are way better. Not many changes are made for the second year of squirts unless somebody has fallen out of favor with the "unbiased" selection committee (which is usually overseen by a board member to make sure that they don't have any issues that they need help with, like putting the wrong kid on the wrong team) or something like that. We now go to year two where it starts all over again except for the fact that the A kids have a head start so they get better by a larger amount. This continues until Bantams comes along. You can take two kids who are at the same level as far as skills and personality goes at the end of Mites and send them into this system and one will be a star (got selected for the A teams) and the other will be done playing hockey by Bantams.

A much better question that you need to ask before you make any moves is "what is the coaching like?" who coaches? Your kid can make a high school team from a Bantam B team if he has had good coaching and is willing to work at it. He can get placed onto the JV to get looked at and have a chance. OTOH, if your association leaves the PeeWee B and the Bantam B kids for dead and only keep them around so they have another revenue stream to help keep the costs down for the A kids then your kid is sunk.

Nobody should move to get their kid onto a different team unless they have a very good kid and are playing in one of those associations that is dropping off in numbers and is on it's way out. There are bunches of them that will trap your kid in place until they fail and until it is too late for your kid to get going. A better option is to move to a smaller to middle size association that is growing and hope like heck that your can get your kid onto the upper B team so that he has a shot at high school hockey. He won't make it onto an A team as those spots were filled a few years ago when the initial squirt evaluations took place but he can get close enough to try to make a leap from the Bantam B team.

This actually makes sense to me.

The piece that is left out here is the talent and athleticism kids are born with, or born without. Kids with it do well regardless of coaching...they come from associations big and small, good and bad.....yet the best coaching in the world won't make a kid that wasn't dealt the right cards into a superstar. The kid from St Francis a few years ago.....did he get the best coaching? Yet he broke scoring records in high school. It's too bad the associations have to get labeled based on these things. When you look at an assoication like Edina, the people that excelled there in the past, and now are working with their own kids, may just have more gifted kids. It might not be the board's fault your association isnt swimming with the sharks.

[The Enlightened One]

You can see where the question comes from and where it is going by going to an association an watching kids progress over time. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy at about the second year of Squirts. The kids start off in Squirts adn are selected to the upper teams based on skill in some cases and who their daddy and or mommy is in others. Board member's kids and the donor's kids always make the A team. The rest of the kids are seeded onto the B teams. The Squirt A kids get top notch coaching with serious coaches who want to win and coach them that way. About half of the B kids get a fairly serious coach and the other half get a dad who wants to see his kid have fun. At the end of the year the A kids are markedly better, the sort of serious B kids are better and the other half had fun. The die is cast. The A kids are contacted and are pulled onto summer hockey teams while the B kids are scrambling to try to make it onto those teams but since they were a Squirt B kid they find slim pickings. Next fall the A kids who also played summer hockey are way better. Not many changes are made for the second year of squirts unless somebody has fallen out of favor with the "unbiased" selection committee (which is usually overseen by a board member to make sure that they don't have any issues that they need help with, like putting the wrong kid on the wrong team) or something like that. We now go to year two where it starts all over again except for the fact that the A kids have a head start so they get better by a larger amount. This continues until Bantams comes along. You can take two kids who are at the same level as far as skills and personality goes at the end of Mites and send them into this system and one will be a star (got selected for the A teams) and the other will be done playing hockey by Bantams.

A much better question that you need to ask before you make any moves is "what is the coaching like?" who coaches? Your kid can make a high school team from a Bantam B team if he has had good coaching and is willing to work at it. He can get placed onto the JV to get looked at and have a chance. OTOH, if your association leaves the PeeWee B and the Bantam B kids for dead and only keep them around so they have another revenue stream to help keep the costs down for the A kids then your kid is sunk.

Nobody should move to get their kid onto a different team unless they have a very good kid and are playing in one of those associations that is dropping off in numbers and is on it's way out. There are bunches of them that will trap your kid in place until they fail and until it is too late for your kid to get going. A better option is to move to a smaller to middle size association that is growing and hope like heck that your can get your kid onto the upper B team so that he has a shot at high school hockey. He won't make it onto an A team as those spots were filled a few years ago when the initial squirt evaluations took place but he can get close enough to try to make a leap from the Bantam B team.

This actually makes sense to me.

The piece that is left out here is the talent and athleticism kids are born with, or born without. Kids with it do well regardless of coaching...they come from associations big and small, good and bad.....yet the best coaching in the world won't make a kid that wasn't dealt the right cards into a superstar. The kid from St Francis a few years ago.....did he get the best coaching? Yet he broke scoring records in high school. It's too bad the associations have to get labeled based on these things. When you look at an assoication like Edina, the people that excelled there in the past, and now are working with their own kids, may just have more gifted kids. It might not be the board's fault your association isnt swimming with the sharks.

I hate to say it but I think you are wrong here. It goes without saying that a kid has to have some basic level of athletic ability and talent or we would not be talking about him. What is probably assumed here is that all coaching is equal. It is not. Coaching is like all other skill sets, some have it and some do not. When you get into an association's A teams you have to assume that you are getting the upper end of their coaching personnel. The break point though is at the level that I think most kids fall into. That A-/B+ kid who for what ever reason lands on a B team. With those kids it is a crap shoot as to what kind of coaching they are going to get. The high end coaches want to coach the A teams so that they can move up the ladder. The good coaches who are trending high end land on a B team and move on after a year or two. The average B team coach though is just that, average. Not bashing B team coaches here, it is good that they are willing to coach. But, if you are not a "professional", for lack of a better word, coach you are probably not up on the latest and greatest. You can have a kid with all of the talent in the world but if he can't catch a pass, can't shoot, is not in the right place at the right time with his stick on the ice he will not succeed. Coaching is everything to that kid and he will make it or break it based on who his coach is. Kids are not born hockey players for the most part. They need to be coached and taught and nurtured so that their talents can be exploited and maximized. Without that maximization he will not reach his potential and will be passed over for a kid who might be less talented but who knows how to behave on the ice because he has been on A teams his whole way up. Sure the kid from St Francis broke the scoring records, I don't know him and never saw him play but I bet he was all alone on a line (basically) and spent a whole bunch of time either going coast to coast with the puck or was fed the puck every time he was on the ice so that he could take a shot. He was a talented kid who really was an outlier for the purposes of this thread, in my opinion.

Coaching is the name of the game. Good coaches will take a kid to high levels and so-so coaches will leave that kid standing flatfooted while the hockey world blows past him. Circling back to the beginning of this thread is the question, where is your kid's best chance to succeed in hockey? Find the best coaching for your kid and tell him to work his a$$ off both on and off the ice and he has a shot. Poor coaching will doom him no matter how talented he is because he will not have been taught the skill set that he needs to be able to know how to behave on the ice when he gets his chance.

[SECoach]

Don't get me wrong. Coaching certainly matters. I just think good talent overcomes weak coaching. All the things you mention are important, but the most talented kids get it without great coaching. Put talented kids with great coaching, and they will be better. Put great coaches with kids with little talent, and they will be better, but it won't turn things around for the kids with 2 left feet. Some associations have numbers which give them more kids with talent. Some associations have a more athletically gifted pool, maybe because there are more gifted parents there. Moving the average kid to a great association won't necessarily make him great. In fact, it might make him below average in that assocation. Isn't that what we are really talking about? Aren't most kids of average talent? I'm just speaking to the thread topic. Too many people want to move their average kid so he can be great. To many people want to move their great kid, so he can be awesome. The average kid that moved will still be average. The great kid will still be great if he stays. A below average Chanhassen kid that moves to Edina will not become an above average talent because of the move. If they prefer the zip code, it's a ggod move. If it's to become a grear player, and they are leaving because of the lack of talented dads that are coaching, probably wont make a huge difference.

With all that said, you are very right that the coaching is probably not equal. I just think families move, or fight with their association for a waiver, or cheat based on school attendance, when in the end, if the kid is good, he's good no matter where he plays. I still have more respect for the family of the talented kid that stays home and battles it out, than for the ones that leave and go play for the superteam thinking that it got them anything more than a paper championship. No respect for the Yankees here. They were already better when they got there.

[The Enlightened One]

You make great points and I see where you are coming from with them. For the most part I agree with what you are saying. But, I think that the greatest difference maker of all for any youth sport, math team, speech team or etc is coaching. No matter how talented a kid is or how smart they are without good coaching most of the time they will not excel. They will be ok and be able to hang in there but they will not rise above the herd.

If I was in a position where I had to figure out where to play a kid my first and only starting point is coaching. Below average coaching gets below average results. Above average coaching to great coaching takes kids to that next level and makes them great even if. Cross the board they are only slightly above average to begin with.

Do not want to fight here but think you are short selling coaching in all of this.

[SECoach]

You make great points and I see where you are coming from with them. For the most part I agree with what you are saying. But, I think that the greatest difference maker of all for any youth sport, math team, speech team or etc is coaching. No matter how talented a kid is or how smart they are without good coaching most of the time they will not excel. They will be ok and be able to hang in there but they will not rise above the herd.

If I was in a position where I had to figure out where to play a kid my first and only starting point is coaching. Below average coaching gets below average results. Above average coaching to great coaching takes kids to that next level and makes them great even if. Cross the board they are only slightly above average to begin with.

Do not want to fight here but think you are short selling coaching in all of this.

I'll agree that coaching has the most effect, of the things that can be controlled. Good coaching will give a kid a better chance of reaching their potential. Whatever that may be.

[observer]

Something for associations to work on is having excellent coaching for the B teams. I understand the comment about kids frozen at A without a lot of changes year to year but several associations need B players to step into A roles every season. Certainly the B team can run the same practice plans as the A team and should. No team should be having better practices than another in the same association. If you see a coach running a better practice get his practice plan and some tips on running upbeat, keeping all the players moving, practices. But, associations also need to have strong coaches for the B teams. Without strong development at B, maybe more important than at A, the kids you need to step into A positions next season won't be ready. B coaches are more important than A.

[SECoach]

Something for associations to work on is having excellent coaching for the B teams. I understand the comment about kids frozen at A without a lot of changes year to year but several associations need B players to step into A roles every season. Certainly the B team can run the same practice plans as the A team and should. No team should be having better practices than another in the same association. If you see a coach running a better practice get his practice plan and some tips on running upbeat, keeping all the players moving, practices. But, associations also need to have strong coaches for the B teams. Without strong development at B, maybe more important than at A, the kids you need to step into A positions next season won't be ready. B coaches are more important than A.

Maybe not more important, but certainly equally important. I believe many, if not most associations now have a coaching director, that generally is responsible for training coaches, and ensuring that every team in the association is getting the most from their time on the ice. If an association doesn't have an active coaching director, they should.

[The Enlightened One]

Coaching at the B level is tough to stabilize. Look at your A level coaches, especially for the PeeWees and for sure at the Bantams and you will probably find a professional coach who played a high level of hockey. The B coaches are more than likely dads who have gone up the ranks with their kid, may or may not have played hockey beyond high school, are not students of the game for the most part and are more "fun" driven than anything. Nobody works with them to train them and most of the time they don,t know that they are gonna be the B coach until they get the call that their kid, once again, did not make the A team so"do you want to take his B team?". Our Bantam A coach knew he was it for next year before last year was done. He is a builder and a good coach. He has a historical mindset that allows him to track what did and did not work, who is tough, and etc. I am sure he is working and planning and thinking about it since last June. On the other hand, our B team coaches (who ever they maybe, they won,t know till very late in the fall) are not even thinking hockey. All of this shows up when you look at practice and etc. not bashing B coaches at all, they have a very hard job when you watch a practice of their,s and see kids ranging from that bubble A kid who is really good on down to that kid who thinks that hockey might be fun to try so he comes out for the team. Rough.

It would be fun to see what somebody like OTC has for experience with this. From what I have gleaned from his posts he is not from MN so he is in an environment where coaching makes or brakes a club. How do they work it when that kid can run down the road to a club with a coach he wants to play for?

The distance between the haves and the have nots has to be shrank or as expensive as hockey is getting we are gonna lose the base of the sport.

[observer]

Some B coaches are better than some A coaches. Often times there are dad coaches at the B level and dads care. A good coach will spend 20 minutes before every practice working on bringing constant flow to their ever evolving practice plans. February practices needs to be quite different than November ones. Not only for the sake of development but also to keep the kids engaged. I've known of paid young men coaches at PeeWee A and Bantam A, with good hockey backgrounds, that don't have the same dedication to developing solid practice plans that a dad B coach has. And the young coaches don't have the same experience with 10-12-14 year olds that a dad does.

[The Enlightened One]

Some B coaches are better than some A coaches. Often times there are dad coaches at the B level and dads care. A good coach will spend 20 minutes before every practice working on bringing constant flow to their ever evolving practice plans. February practices needs to be quite different than November ones. Not only for the sake of development but also to keep the kids engaged. I've known of paid young men coaches at PeeWee A and Bantam A, with good hockey backgrounds, that don't have the same dedication to developing solid practice plans that a dad B coach has. And the young coaches don't have the same experience with 10-12-14 year olds that a dad does.

All true. My statements were not meant to condem anybody only to point out that I think that coaching is a huge issue and that if a club has a handle on t they will be better off than those who tend to live more year to year.

[O-townClown]

It would be fun to see what somebody like OTC has for experience with this. From what I have gleaned from his posts he is not from MN so he is in an environment where coaching makes or brakes a club. How do they work it when that kid can run down the road to a club with a coach he wants to play for?

TEO, thanks for asking.

My impression is that families are looking for an environment they are comfortable with and the coaching aspect is graded Pass/Fail. Either someone is good enough in their eyes to be the coach, or they're not.

You are right that people can move to a new club at season's end. In my estimation, Hockey Directors and Coaches like to think they are the best in their field and everyone else is substandard. The arrogance knows no bounds, as these Hockey Directors and Coaches usually feel that their immense hockey knowledge trumps all.

I think there are 3 components of success for coaching youth sports:
1) Administrative and Organizational skills
2) Communication skills
3) Knowledge of sport

When people talk about shortcomings, they typically describe problems in the first two areas. Some folks are attracted to coaches that have played NHL or NCAA hockey, but it is important to note that they wouldn't be looking if they were content. Nobody I know has ever said, "we happy with the Falcons, but Timmy's going to be a Liger because we think the coaching will be better." Of course, that could change as kids age.

In other words, I don't see "coaching" as making or breaking the club if you are just referring to #3 above. If by coaching you mean all of the above, then yes...with the first two being more important.

[BadgerBob82]

I tend to agree with observer, and not just about A vs B coaches, but the general concept that paid coaches are better than Dad coaches. I had a conversation with a former NHL player that was standing near me watching a game last year. I asked why he wasn't coaching. Rolled his eyes and said, we have paid coaches. Asked how that was going. Said they show up to the rink as the Zamboni doors are being shut, throw a recycled practice plan together and start yelling at the kids. He was disgusted.

[JSR]

We had a non-parent coach for our Pee Wee A team last year. He had an extensive playing background and had been coaching different levels for 3 years before taking over our team. He'd show up for practice and would still be lacing his skates while the kids were already on the ice (aka he'd show up afer practice had started). His practice plans were hardly "planned". He'd show up for games 10 minutes before the game was supposed to start leaving it up to the kids when they got there (aka some kids wanted to get there to warmup and be ready, others not so much), he altogether missed 4 games. I'd also often see him with a lip full of chewing tobacco while still inside the rink. Yet when I applied for this same coaching position I was told I would "not be a good fit because I was a parent coach".... atleast I would have cared and would have been there on time and had a practice plan and ran a warm up for games and would have set a good example off the ice. But yeah, parent coaches are much worse than nonparent coaches FYI, this same person was tabbed to once again be the Pee Wee A coach and the board would not listen to anything to the contrary, sufficed to say my son has decided to move on to a AAA Tier 1 hockey team in our area (remember guys I live in WI.....), and it was his request not mine, his exact words "Dad, I want a good coach next year", second year pee wee's know the difference