Why We Play: Director's Vision

I am involved in youth sport because it is a great teacher. Helping young people learn how to fail safely and persist through setbacks, to succeed with grace, and to become excellent people and teammates in a healthy environment is what youth sport is all about. I want players who join Detroit Lakes Youth Hockey to become lifelong hockey people no matter the competitive level they reach. And I want them to carry the benefits of hockey with them long after their competitive playing days: team play, courage, leadership, accountability, work ethic, and a commitment to always striving for their best.

I’m involved in this organization because I am a proud product of it. Detroit Lakes Youth Hockey helped me to play hockey at some of the highest levels and prepared me to lead at every step.

My top priority is for players to grow and develop, as people and as players. We achieve that by recognizing an important first principle of youth sports: kids of all ages credit fun as the main reason they participate. If your player aspires to be great and play at the highest levels, so much depends upon developing passion first. The environment we create as parents and coaches influences whether they can do that.

This means age-appropriateness is extremely important. Youth athletes cite trying hard, positive coaching, and positive team dynamics as the most important pieces of a fun experience. Lucky for us, development in hockey is fun, and fun is development. This is also the recipe for positive team and community culture.

Development is a long game. Be patient. Let kids be kids. Development happens mostly in practice because we get more ice time, puck touches, and instruction there. Following the science of skill acquisition, we train in station-based practices and small area games to promote skating and puck skills, spatial awareness, and decision-making in a challenging, fun environment. These slices of the game promote real, “sticky” learning that transfers to game performance.

Competition teaches many of the sport’s lessons: how to control what we can control (attitude and effort but not referees or the other team); how to depend on teammates and how to earn their trust; how to lead; how to follow; how to lose with grace and how to win with humility.

Development also happens beyond the rink in dryland training, at the outdoor rink, in the driveway, and in the other athletic activities in which our players should participate outside of hockey. In other words, excellent hockey is about more than the program. Hockey requires “multi-tasking” in a bunch of complex athletic moves, and the best players in the long run are well-rounded athletes. Resist the “fear of missing out” that encourages kids to play only hockey, year-round, to be the best. Encourage lots of diverse athletic activities, target quality skill development in summer programing, and then be patient as players grow. If we’ve fostered passion with a supportive environment, players will take ownership over their development as they get older.

Pillars of Hockey Development. These six broad areas hold up the roof. They encompass skills, habits, and attitude:

1.   Skating. The foundation for everything else.

2.   Puck skills. Passing, stick handling, and shooting. Off ice and on, we train with head up. Always.

3.   Hockey Sense. Watch hockey. Pay attention to an individual player to pick up on habits, techniques, and how they read the game.

4.   Defensive Habits. Angling, defending opponents’ midsection (instead of looking down at the puck), stick-on-puck.

5.   Scanning. Call it a “shoulder-check” or “peeking,” the best hockey players scan the ice regularly in all situations.

6.   Competitiveness. Winning is not everything in youth sports, but competitiveness is important to the lessons we take from sport and to succeeding in the game. We value the puck. That means working to get it and choosing intelligent, skilled plays to keep it.

Parents. Cheer hard and positively. Tell your players “I love to watch you play,” and enjoy the ride rather than obsessing over short-term results. We are not always the best, but we can be the best at getting better.

Like many hockey players, I finished my playing career with an immense appreciation for my parents and all they had done for me. Among the most important things, I’ve realized with age, was that when I was young, I never heard them speak negatively about coaches, teammates, or officials. They never gave me the excuses I might have been looking for when things didn’t go perfectly.

The youth sports experience is the players’ journey, not ours. Let’s build good teammates by supporting coaches, teammates, and officials. Honor the game, because hockey can make great humans, and we’ll be humans a lot longer than we’ll be youth hockey players!

See you at the rink!

Joe Schiller

Hockey Director