You can find business stories everywhere, and Sunday's column about the legal battle between for-profit Minnesota Made Hockey and Minnesota Hockey Inc., the nonprofit governing body for youth hockey in Minnesota, is the perfect illustration of that maxim.
It also happens to be a topic I'm closer to than most. I played hockey growing up in Canada and Massachusetts (if you are already giving me credit for being a better hockey player than I ever was, please, take it back!); I have two young sons who play. I'm certified to coach through bantam level (9th grade), and currently coach a squirt C team for Langford Park in St. Paul. I am not on the board of our association, which had annual revenue of $32,699 for the year ending Aug. 31, 2009.
I think hockey is one of the best sports a child can play in terms of exercise and athleticism and for learning about the values of hard work and teamwork. I greatly appreciate what USA Hockey is doing with the promotion of the American Development Model. By some measures, youth hockey in the States is in better shape than its northern neighbor. I've also benefitted tremendously from the coaching resources made available by Minnesota Hockey.
But I've also been stunned at times by the casual disregard I've seen and heard in response to hockey's customers - the parents who enroll their children and pay the bills. The instructor for one of my certification sessions flat out said that he refuses to talk to parents before or after practices. Another said he requires all parents to bring their concerns to the team's manager, not him. This session, by the way, was for Level 1 certification, and the audience included parents who would be coaching kids as young as age 4.
Now, I know first hand that the words "hockey" and "politics" are almost inseparable, and that the phrase "hockey parent" is almost always preceded by the word "crazy."
On the politics side: Our neighborhood association has been around for 50+ years, but we were under the auspices of the Como Hockey Association and restricted to fielding only a C-level team. This was a sore point for Como and us because their numbers were going down while ours were rising. Como has since merged with Johnson and we are independent again, though still restricted to fielding a C-level team. Some parents in our association are appealing to Minnesota Hockey for the right to field a B team if we have enough kids who can play at that level. I have not been involved in those discussions or meetings.
On the crazy side: There's good crazy, which I define as being as willing to sit in ice arenas in both January and July.
The other kind of crazy? The parent who thinks their child is too good for the program - and lets everyone know so. Or the parent who believes their child never gets a fair shake from the coach, or who loudly berates opposing players, his child's coach, or his own child during a game. Or the adult who threw a chair at our tournament director because he was unhappy with the procedure we used to resolve a tie game.
