I put up my hand to be a hockey coach, because there would be professional coaches helping out with practices. Most of what I know, I learned from the sidelines of watching house league and through osmosis as a Canadian.

If we didn’t have professional coaches, I wouldn’t have volunteered. So, I suspect that I’m part of the target market for this addition. They ran the practices for 2.5 months, from the start of the season until Christmas. I was hoping that I would learn how to do on-ice coaching from the professionals.

Since this is a bit of a single-perspective retrospective, I’ll use a “happy, confused, sad” format.

Happy

• I liked having the professional coaches. I could count on them being there every Saturday.
• There was a strong emphasis on skills, which was appropriate for the beginning of the year and lower skill players.
• The drills were generally good and the coaches were competent. They demonstrated the drills well, gave good feedback, and was patient with the kids.
• The kids improved. It was cool to watch the kids get better over multiple iterations within a single session.

Confused

• I’m not sure what was the intention behind having professional coaches. My impression was it was supposed to be a train-the-trainer model, but that’s not what happened.
• Professional coaching was probably expensive. How did we decide that his was a better way to spend money than paying for a subscription to online resources or a course? Some examples that would have been helpful are CoachThem (used by the Select team) or a course.
• I’m not sure if this format led to low attendance by Select players. They may have felt it was too basic and the practices couldn’t complete with their other obligations. Or maybe the Select players wouldn’t have come anyways. It’s hard to know. But it probably would have been good to have drills that could be adapted to different skill levels.
• At practice, we share the ice with another team. After a few weeks, the coaches on the other team ran some drills in parallel with the professional coaches. For example, during the skating portion, the volunteer coach did more basic drills in one lane. Eventually, they stopped using the professional coaches altogether. I’m not sure why this happened. Was it because they thought the professional coaches were not doing a good job? Or that they couldn’t ask for something different?

Sad

• I would have liked to receive more coaching from them as a coach. I was hoping to have learned more about how to create a practice plan, how to read a drill, how to choose a drill, and what to look for to give feedback.
• I would have liked to receive the practice plans in advance on “paper.” These would be a valuable resource for me now.
• I would have liked more consistency in coaching. Some professional coaches involved the volunteer parents by setting up stations. Others did not use stations, which resulted in kids standing around waiting their turn too much.
• I would have liked more continuity in the coaching. We had a lot of different coaches. Part of the reason is we have three different time slots at two arenas. Coaches were assigned to time and places, but the teams moved around. But also, we had substitute occasionally.
• I would have liked more team tactics. We didn’t have many drills on how to work together as a team. To give a simple example, how to take a face off. Consequently, we didn’t start this until January, which was very late.

The bottom line is I’m glad we had the coaches. I wouldn’t be a coach without them. There was a lot of potential for positive impact. The potential was realized for the players, but less so for the coaches.

I began leading the team this week as head coach. I created the practice plan, talked to the kids, and assigned tasks to the assistant coaches. It was hard work getting there and it was stressful, but we managed to pull off a close win.

When I put together the practice plan, I knew that there were two things I wanted to work on: passing the puck and playing positions. I went down the rabbit hole of Internet hockey drill repositories.

It takes a long time for me to read a drill. I’m like a kid who is learning to read prose— I use my finger and sound out the words, and I still get things wrong.

I picked out a bunch of passing drills. I went to shinny twice with my son and I practiced putting out cones and giving instructions. Not surprisingly, I’m terrible at it. By Thursday, I chose a set of six to email to Coach Matthew and Coach Mahmood.

Coach Matthew offered to lead off with a skating drill. I accepted gladly.

We only got through four of the drills that I had planned. And the kids were generally terrible at them. There was a lot of skating, so they got tired. There was a lot of passing, but not much shooting. I think the kids didn’t have a lot of fun. The saving grace was the game of British Poke Check at the end.

Before the game, I prepared the lines (assigning players to positions), something that Coach Matthew normally does. We compared notes and I made a couple of tweaks, but we weren’t far apart.

Before the game, I led the team meeting, something I had never done before. I announced the lines. I reminded them to pass the puck and to be ready to receive the puck. The best passer would receive an entire bag of Kit Kat Minis.

I asked Coach Mahmood to run the defence, which is something I would normally do. I wanted to listen in on how Coach Matthew ran the offence, and I wanted to watch the game as a whole. I stood on the bench to get a better view of the ice. I only fell off once and as far as I know no one noticed.

Our opponents scored their first goal 30 seconds into the game. By about 12 minutes into the game, we were behind by 5 goals. We were letting goals in and players were generally not passing. Coach Matthew kept saying, “Lots of game left to play.”

About 5 minutes into the second period, the team started coming together. Defence got tighter. Passing started to happen. We gradually started to close the gap. We scored the winning goal with less than a minute left to play. Our goalie made a crucial stop to end the game.

Then, it was time to hand out the Kit Kat. I told the kids that I was proud of their grit. I called out two runner-ups, before giving the candy to the winner. All three players are normally quiet and unassuming. Positive reinforcement for behaviour you want to see and starve behaviour that you don’t want to see.

I am proud of myself. Usually, the team wins and I feel like I didn’t have anything to do with it. But this was different. I identified the direction, I chose the drills, and I motivated the kids.

I feel like I’m driving the bus now. I feel like I deserve to be called Coach Susan. I’m not taking a back seat to the ACs, but still working collaboratively. And I think this is what the ACs want too. They didn’t want to be Head Coach, for their own reasons. My relationship with them is collegial, but not close, and I appreciate that they’ve been holding space for me to step up.

On Saturday, we were using a practice plan that Coach Matthew used with his Select team. There was a mix of technical skills, team tactics, and fun drills. After we finished the first drill, Coach Matthew sauntered up to me and made a beautiful, effortless hockey stop, and said, “What are we working on, Coach?”

It was a light bulb moment for me. I’m the head coach. As if it wasn’t clear enough already, Coach Matthew wants me to be head coach. He said as much at the beginning of the year, that he couldn’t be head coach. He has also been taciturn and not opinionated about what the team was learning from professional coaches. I had hoped to take care of the off-ice details and leave the on-ice to Coach Matthew and Coach Mahmood. In retrospect, this division is not that clean. What happens in the dressing room is connected with what happens on the ice. And nobody had been driving. I was hoping one of them would step up, and they thought I would take the job.

So, I picked the next drill and paid close attention to how he gave instructions. I will need to pick up a whistle and whiteboard with an arena printed on it. He explained the drill using the whiteboard and then demonstrated on the ice. I listened to the words that he used and the scribbles on the whiteboard.

We lost our game on Sunday. In the dressing room, Coach Matthew pointed out that we were an easy team to beat right now, because we’re not passing the puck. I had been waiting a long time for him to say something like this, so I was looking forward to the next practice.

I’m taking the steering wheel now. I now have a direction, buy in, and some tools. Let’s go.

I expected to be outside my comfort zone and I got that in spades, probably more than I expected. For the first couple of weeks of the season, I had trouble falling asleep after games because I re-hash all the things I got wrong. They weren’t big things, but it was uncomfortable not getting things right. It’s better now and I don’t have any trouble sleeping.

The experience has been simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar.

In my work life, I’m a woman POC in technology and I lead teams. I’ve always had to deal with unconscious bias and being the “only” in the room. That experience has served me well. I’m the only woman coach in our division. I haven’t met any other women coaches.

Being a coach who doesn’t play hockey is a lot like being a mid-level manager who doesn’t have the skill to be an individual contributor. It’s not so different from being a mid-level manager. I have to over-communicate with my peers to build relationships and present a vision for the team. My assistant coaches didn’t know what to make of me at first. They didn’t have any template for someone like me, so they didn’t know which way to jump. I hope they’re used to me now. I ask a lot of questions. I try get their input, though they don’t have a lot to say.

What has been unfamiliar are the practices and the kids.

During the on-ice practices, some of the coaches have been lovely and gave me things to do. Other times, I wander around aimlessly. I feel like I’m most helpful in trying to get things to go smoothly. I collect up pucks. I visit different drill stations and provide small bits of encouragement.

The kids are like space aliens to me. Although, one of them is my son, I feel like I don’t have a good mental model for their hearts and heads. When I talk to them on the ice, they give me strange looks. It’s like they’re here for the hockey, not chit chat. Most kids follow my instructions, because I’m an adult and they’ve been programmed to do that. A few of the select players don’t really respect me. They are slow to follow instructions and don’t make eye contact with me when I’m talking to them. I still need to win them over.

Whatever the struggles on my part, the team has a record of 4-1-1. The team will continue to be happy for as long as we’re winning. I don’t know how viable this is as a long term strategy, but that’s where we are in week 6.