How often parents and players have heard of their current head coach of the phrase – “If you’re good enough, they will find you”?
I wonder if you are hungry and got a meal that makes you sick or feel like you’ve not eaten, how many times you will always eat the same meal?
Any coach or scout, that uses the sentence : “If you’re good enough, they’ll find you,” used in the world today, is either stupid idiot or lazy. This phrase is simply not true. Many years ago, yes, it is true, but today it is not, and many, many players go unnoticed for many reasons.
The main reason of this sentence is not true, is simple.
With thousands of AAA and Junior teams in the world, it is physically and financially impossible for scouts to see all the players, even for one period of hockey each year.
Of course, if you are the best player in the league, you will have the chance to see someone at some point in the next level. Everyone knows who is the best player. When you are the 30th best player in the league, only people in the league know who you are. When you send your information to coach the next level next year, you can get camp invite as everyone else does and nothing more.
The game is more competitive in recruitment now then the game on the ice. It is the best player that easily move up to the next level. Not the player who simply blend in the middle of the pack, he is promised nothing.
Do you think the coach wants to see the middle player go? The player they can rely on? Almost always, they do not. Coaches also want the credit for “IF” team at the next level takes you. Many coaches will not work to move a player if he can continue to win with this player
Yes, you have also heard it said: “We can do just as good at the next level at promoting players?” Really? If you could do just as good, then you should be.
Parents and players must stop eating the food that makes them sick. Parents and players the repetition of the same activity expecting different results is a dream and you need to wake up.
I write to you today because I heard these things being said at tryout camps all summer and parents repeatedly repeated phrase. These parents are of good players, not the best players, but players who could move to a higher level. Several of them who knew me in recent years, wondering if this saying is true. My answer is always the same;
“If you keep hearing the same thing over and over again for years, and nothing changes, then why do you keep listening? If I say the sky is red and see every morning it is blue; would you not eventually think me crazy or stupid? ”
Parents and players, seek professional help outside of your coaches, or be the best player in the league. If not, then you need to find a real plan that will help you reach your full potential.
It is funny. I enjoy the show “Gold Rush” on the Discovery network. I remember the first season. A group of inexperienced men go out looking for gold and don’t find much of anything. They did not have the plan except to dig for gold where other people found it before. You parent and player who keep going from camp to camp, team to team, are looking for gold without any plan.
It take the people on Gold Rush about six years to figure things out and develop the plan for success. Do you have six years left to figure out you plan?
Coach
