Neither the Wife nor I have ever tried to force the kids to do sports they don’t like. The furthest we’ve pushed them is to complete seasons. We take the approach that if they sign on to something, they need to see it through. If they really didn’t like it, they don’t have to sign up for the next year.
The one thing the Wife and I both stress is effort. We want them both to give their best effort when they are out there. Where hockey is concerned, it’s pretty easy to tell when they are doing that.
This past weekend was the first time where they both gave the kind of effort we’d like to see from them all the time. The lass was rewarded with a breakaway goal in her game. It was well earned for her. She’d skated hard the whole game and was really good with her positioning. Rather than crowding her teammates when they had the puck, she’d position herself in front of the goal in hopes of a pass. She was close a bunch of times. Her breakaway was well earned.
The boy’s reward was less tangible, and I had to explain it to him afterwards.
First, it was obvious he was tired by the end of the game. He was taking breaks when he could get away with it and during faceoffs, he would hunch way over and rest his elbows on his knees. His line was shorthanded and playing 4-on-4 on full-length ice will sap the energy out of the youngest legs.
The game was tied going into the final 2 shifts. The boy’s line started with 3 minutes to go and they had their back against the wall the whole 1:30 they were on the ice. They played in their defensive zone pretty much the entire time. With about 10 seconds to go on their shift, the puck squirted out from the corner across the goal mouth where an opposing player picked it up and skated across the goal mouth, with only the goalie in front of him.
I was sure it was going to be a goal.
I was so sure, I didn’t notice the boy had been busy chasing him down. The player was taking his time for the shot and it ended up being a moment too long. The boy caught up to him and from the backside, stripped the puck and flicked it into the corner. A few seconds later, the buzzer sounded ending their shift and they’d escaped. His team’s final shift went out and scored a game winning goal with a minute left.
The boy wasn’t aware of how his hustle had paid off until after I’d explained to him how it looked. I’d witnessed the whole thing from right behind the net. He still tries to count things in terms of assists and goals. Hustle plays like the one he’d perpetrated he just doesn’t pay attention to.
I was happy to let him know about it though.