My new job gave me the world’s strangest schedule. I had to be at work by 5:00am, but since I was inexperienced, I went in even earlier so I could triple-check everything. As a result, I found myself wanting to go to bed around 8:00pm every night. This would have wrecked my social life if I had one.
I did have my afternoons off though. After production meetings for the next day, I was usually done by 2:00pm. None of my friends were free then, unless I wanted to help Karen with her dog-walking job.
So I decided to do something productive with my free time. I went back to see Lois, the woman in charge of the Britannia Community Centre where I had taught skating last summer.
“Kelly, it’s great to see you again.” Lois Phan was a real dynamo and worked very hard for what I suspected was not a huge salary. “What can I do for you?”
“I came in to see if you need any assistant coaches for hockey. I have some free time, and I’d like to volunteer.”
Her dark pencilled eyebrows went up. “Well, that’s nice. We don’t get many volunteers who aren’t parents.” She reached into a drawer. You’ll have to fill out some forms. I think we did a police check on you when you worked for us last summer, but you need a new one every year. I’ll talk to someone in minor hockey about you. Did you have an age range you prefer?”
“Not really. Maybe younger kids? Actually, you know one thing—I’d prefer to help a team that had boys and girls. Because that was my team back in the day.”
I got a call from Lois the very next day. She had found a team that was a perfect fit for me. I called the coach, a guy named Mark George, and he suggested I come to practice that night. He muttered something about knowing what I was getting into first, and didn’t sound very welcoming.
I got to Britannia Rink with a small duffle of gear. To my surprise, there was only one coach on the ice with the whole team, although there were a few parents hovering on the bench. I laced up my skates, grabbed my stick and went out on the ice.
“Oh hey, you came,” said Mark. He was a dark-haired guy around forty. “Kids, this is Terry.”
“Actually, it’s Kelly.”
“Sorry.”
The kids eyed me suspiciously. They were various sizes, and five of them were girls. Since the team was Atom, they were nine and ten years old. While a few of the boys were well equipped, most of the kids had worn out gear. One of the bigger guys mumbled, “What’s she doing here?”
“We need more coaches, and Kelly might be one of them.”
“A girl coach?” the same kid asked. “This team is even more of a joke than I thought.”
“Girls are good players these days. Like the Canadian women’s Olympic team,” I explained, but the little smartass rolled his eyes at that.
Mark sighed and blew his whistle. “Let’s get started on our warm-up.” They skated around the rink, and it was clear that there were some major differences. Half the team was decent, but the others were terrible skaters. When they were supposed to skate backwards, there was a lot of falling down. And the good skaters were mocking or ignoring the bad ones. This was the worst team chemistry I’d ever seen.
Mark ran the kids through some drills, but the biggest problem remained the discrepancies. There was a lot of standing around while the slower kids scrambled to complete the drills that the good kids breezed through. They had a scrimmage at the end. Predictably, the good kids had the puck all the time, and the other kids hardly got any good game play in.
Afterwards, the kids took off, and I chatted with Mark.
“Not sure if you’re still interested now that you can see what you’re in for.”
“No, I’m in. But why is the team so varied in their abilities?”
He shook his head. “It’s only my second year as head coach. Last year, when I got to the draft, I basically got snowed. The other coaches traded me all their rejects and problem players. And when it came to this year’s draft, I tried to fix things but I ended up with half of last year’s group and half a team that doesn’t want to be here. Parents have already started phoning the league to get their kids traded off the ‘loser team.’ Even my own son’s not too excited.”
I shook my head. The politics of minor hockey were beyond me. “Well, the main thing is skating. We need to get their skating abilities up. They need more ice time.”
“Where did you play minor hockey?”
“North Van.”
Mark’s lip curled slightly. “Well, in the rich suburbs, most of the dads have played hockey. If not, they can send them to power skating or skatemill. Here in East Van, lots of the parents are immigrants. Their kids want to play, and the parents want to help, but they don’t have any hockey backgrounds. And most of them work.” He made a noise that seemed to dismiss me as some kind of rich bitch.
“Hey, ease up. I worked at this rink last summer, so I do have a clue about the kids in this area. And, Mark, I’m on your side. I get that you’re upset about the team, but you can’t coach alone.”
I had tons of ideas already. First off, we could split the team into two, and I could do power skating exercises with one group. There was no point in doing skills stuff with kids who aren’t going to touch the puck. My old coach, Jerry Jankowski, had shown me that it wasn’t about your best players, but making the worst players better that helped a team to win. He was a very smart coach.
“Sorry, Kelly. I guess I feel like I’ve been shafted for so long, and the new season’s already in the toilet. Have you coached before?”
I shook my head. “But I’ve taught at hockey camps and programs, and I was captain of my university hockey team.”
He shook his head, like my inexperience was yet another trial for him. “Well, you get what you get. Welcome aboard.”
Of course, it was a lot easier to think up ideas than to put them into practice. I got the worst half of the team and half of the ice. I wanted to maximize our ice time, so I set up this drill where each skater moved from station to station. Skate to the first one. Stickhandle through mini pylons. Skate backwards to the next station. Then shoot the puck. It seemed easy to me, but it was a complete gong show in practice. The kids went all different speeds, they got confused, and everything went wrong. I could see both Mark and Henrietta, the manager, shaking their heads. However the kids didn’t seem to mind the chaos, they were crashing into each other and laughing.
I blew my whistle. “Okay, let’s back it up. Everyone start doing laps while I set up.” I took the pylons and spread them far apart in a circle. We started with stickhandling our way through gaps a mile wide. Once they got the hang of it, we went faster.
“Be gentle. Cradle that puck like it’s an egg.” One of the boys promptly fired his puck into the boards and squealed that his egg had broken.
“Save that for the shooting exercise,” I told him. I was going to have to learn everyone’s names, but I was happy to see that the jerks were all in Mark’s half.
Things started going better once everyone got the drill. I’d have to teach drills one at a time before I could add them together. The main thing was to get everyone skating more. I could see that a few of them were already getting tired since they were used to stopping and starting so much.
I blew my whistle. “Stop. Can anyone here do crossovers?” I was greeted with blank faces. One step at a time. “Okay, laps again. As fast as you can go.”
Henrietta, the manager, was very supportive after my terrible first practice.
“You’re doing the right thing, Kelly. They need the skating basics.”
“Thanks. I’d really like to make things more fun. I have a few ideas, and I was wondering if any of the parents could help.”
She shook her head. “That’s one of our problems. The parents who want to help can’t skate, and the ones who can skate won’t help.” She sniffed dismissively. It must have been a pain to deal with parents who complained and tried to get off your team.
“They won’t need to skate.” Someone to time laps would be good. I wanted to see if we could borrow a radar gun and measure their shot velocity. The main thing was to get kids to compete against themselves and not each other. Then even the worst skaters could see progress. I liked a challenge—especially a hockey challenge.