My First Youth Sport Argument

I was waiting for the boy to get changed up after his team had won their first round house league playoff game 1-0 when I overheard another father starting to gripe about the game.

He was furious that the boy’s team hadn’t played their B-line goalie.

First, a moment’s explanation. This local house league hockey and therefore has a limited pool of kids to draw from. This year, the league was unable to field separate Junior level and 9-13 level teams, so they combined the two ages to form a single league. Each team was comprised of an A-line and a B-line. The A-line consisted of the older Junior players while the B-line consisted of the younger “Atoms” players. Goalies are always in short supply and even with only 6 teams, 2 out of the 6 had only their A-line goalie to play. Games were setup such that A-line teams always played against A-line teams, and the same with the B-line. Further, while B-line players could be moved up to the A-line, the reverse was not allowed, except for goalies.

The team the boy played against yesterday sported only an A-line goalie. As far as mental advantages go, I don’t think anyone would argue it’s a big one to have an older experienced player lining up younger guys. But that was just the situation for our B-line players. Just for a little seasoning, I’ll add that this particular goalie was clearly the best goalie in the league.

So the boy’s coach, in order to give his team its best chance at winning, chose to play our A-line goalie for most of the game. The argument clearly being why give up that kind of advantage to the other team?

This father took exception to that. I pointed out that the one team only had the one goalie.

This father looked at me like I was some kind of child and then started explaining how the boy’s team had all the best skaters in the league. Notice, he didn’t exactly address my point. He went on to say that the boy’s team’s B-line players could skate rings around the A-line guys for the other team.

Talk about an insult to the skills of those players. First, it was demonstrably not true. The game ended 1-0. If the skill levels were that lopsided, it would have shown up in the score. Second, it was clear to me now that this guy simply had an axe to grind.

I pointed all this out and then went on to point out that the boy’s team actually had to rotate B-line players into the A-line rotation because one of our older players had left during the game. The father looked at me and said “No they didn’t.”

It was all I could do not to laugh. Now, it was my turn to give a dismissive look as I said “Do you even know who all the players are on that team’s A-line?”

Crickets in response.

At that point, he disengaged from arguing with me. Instead, he turned and started whining to some other poor sucker about he unfairness of it all.

It never ceases to amaze me how poorly parents react to sports. Competitive sports is inherently about unfairness and the ability to take advantage of it. Maybe on balance, the boy’s team were slightly faster skaters. But the team they played was clearly more physical- repeatedly knocking guys down in a league where checking “isn’t allowed.” Was that fair? As I stated, the boy’s team had 2 B-line players pulling double shifts- first playing their own normal shift and then subbing in to play on the A-line. Was that fair? Was it fair that the other team only had 1 goalie?

At the end of the day, it was a hard fought, 1-0 victory for the boy’s team and it easily could have gone the other way. Those two teams went out there and competed for an hour against each other. There was going to be a winner and a loser. That’s sports. Parents need to deal with that.