Authors: Todd Millar
Moron (12 page)
Chapter Eleven
W
e usually think of bullies as children on a school playground who bully another child. From my perspective, as it relates to minor hockey and this great game that we love so much, when we really strip it down and go back through this book chapter by chapter, we return to the common thread that the
real
bullies inside the game of minor hockey are not the players, but the adults.
Think about it. Where is the bully problem? Where’s the moronic behaviour? Where are all of the issues coming out of the game of hockey? They are not with the children.
Sure, there’s a bad situation that occurs from time to time on the ice, where a child hits another child incorrectly, the referee sees it, and then the kid gets a penalty, where they have to sit in the penalty box or be suspended from the game. We watch out for that kind of thing. We also watch out for inappropriate behaviours and bullying in the dressing room, where kids might bully one of their teammates.
However, the regulations that are in place to deal with child bullies are quite strong, and they are also the ones who are the most easily disciplined in terms of the rules, regulations, guidelines, and hierarchy that is in place for hockey. You know, when we really strip down all of the real absolute key issues that we need to fix as a society, far beyond the game of hockey, it’s the behaviour of adults that is the problem.
From the Spider-Man father, climbing up the frickin’ glass, banging on it and screaming at the top of his lungs at the twelve-year-old official on the ice, or screaming at his child because he did not do a breakout play properly, to the coach standing up on top of the boards screaming at the top of his lungs at the official, or at his players for not behaving properly, shouting, “skate harder” or “hit him,” there are many moronic behaviours that we see in and out of the game. But, ultimately, this is a hockey game, and it’s all about the kids, and adults need to be more cognizant of the behaviours they are modeling.
We’re not talking about a NHL game. We’re not watching guys making millions of dollars playing a game. We are watching children in community rinks out there for the sole benefit of achieving some physical fitness, establishing camaraderie with friends, learning rules and regulations, and being in a respectful environment with coaches. That’s what we’re talking about here, and the people who are spoiling this – the real bullies – are the adults.
The truth is, even when bullying happens among kids, the responsibility for it usually lies in some part with the adults. Unfortunately, the most common form of bullying these days happens as a result of cellphones with cameras. In this age of social media and technology, pictures from the locker room are sometimes sent around.
The reality of the situation is, this should never have happened in the first place, if adults had been following the rules. Inside of the minor hockey rules, as they are laid out today, there must always be two adults in every dressing room in a minor hockey situation in Hockey Canada. That is the rule, but many adults don’t know the rule, and coaches aren’t enforcing the rule – many of them ignoring the occurrence of the problem.
If the bullying rules were properly enforced, as written, you would seldom have problems with a child being disrespectful, abusive, or bullying another human being, let along taking a photograph of another boy in the locker room. Second of all, the added protection of having two adults in every locker room situation helps guard against, God forbid, the situation where you end up with an adult who takes advantage of that child’s trust.
The other thing is the importance of an education component when it comes to kids. Hockey Canada has embraced a program called Respect in Sport, and they have just launched a new program. Their goal is to educate kids more and more, in terms of what bullying looks like. That will, and has, made all the difference. Only, not with adult bullies. That problem still exists.
Picture, for a moment, some person in your neighborhood saying to you, “You know what? I’m going to start using your sprinkler. I’m going to use your water to water my lawn, and that’s the way it’s going to be, because I’m the biggest guy on the street.”
That situation sounds ridiculous – it just wouldn’t happen. And yet, suddenly, in the game of minor hockey, when an adult sees his child being neglected by the coach, is sitting him on the bench and obviously that child knows what happening.
He’s not getting played because I guess he’s not as good as the other players on the team and I see it, and parents have come to me in the past and said, “It’s just horrible. I’m so upset about this,” and when I invariably ask them, “So what are you going to do about it?” Parents reply with, “Oh well, I can’t do anything about it because then Johnny will no longer be able to play on this elite level team next year.”
When we think about that, and anybody that would read those statements, read that story, I would challenge you to say, ‘Is that acceptable?’ Is that remotely, in any concept, is that an acceptable behaviour by an adult to not step up to defend their child, for fear of retribution from the coach?
What is even worse is what are we teaching the child at the center of this mess. What are we teaching your child as you jump in the car or truck that night, and as you drive home from the rink, Little Johnny says, “Boy, Dad, I don’t get to play very much; the coach doesn’t play me. He must not like me, or I’m not the strongest of players, so I guess I shouldn’t be playing hockey.” That’s just not the way things should operate.
The solution needs to come from the bottom up; from the majority of adults who are
not
the bullies; from the majority who are
not
morons.
The majority of adults inside this game are really, really good, decent people and that’s where the solution comes from. It comes from them showing a sincere and active interest in getting involved, speaking out, and not putting up with bullying behaviour when they witness it.
Instead of sitting back and waiting for the system to deal with the adult’s inappropriate bullying behaviour, or the inappropriate behaviour in a volunteer rank, or the inappropriate behaviour as a coach, parents need to speak up and not allow themselves to be bullied. The vast majority of parents are great people and they want nothing but greatness to occur inside this game. So the solution comes from not sitting back waiting for the hierarchy or the system to fix it. The system has all the right rules and regulations in place. It’s time to fix the problem of systemic adult bullying from the bottom up.
The problem is parents or adults are not prepared to step up for fear of retribution, for fear of isolation, for fear of legacy issues as a result of them stepping up and saying ‘look this is just unacceptable’. The more and more people that step up to that, against the bullies, against the adults that are misbehaving, the quicker we can fix the problem. But it will take action from good people to prevail over these bullies.
Chapter Twelve
I
n the first chapter of this book, I introduced the concept of the Moron Helmet. I’d like to go back to that in a moment, but first I’d like to talk about where that idea came from.
Search in your favorite search engine for “magic helmet” and you will see the three-minute YouTube video that’s been shared all over the place. It’s a video of a nine-year-old boy who passionately and articulately shares his views about what is really going on when kids are on the ice.
When this young boy puts on his helmet to start the hockey game, he calls it a magic helmet – because all of the adults suddenly treat him like a grownup. When he’s on the ice, playing minor hockey, after he puts his magic helmet on, he is disrespected, yelled at, and can seemingly do nothing right. The boy thinks, “When I’m on the ice, playing minor hockey after I put on my magic helmet, they clearly start treating me with disrespect and yelling and screaming at me. So clearly this helmet must be magical because those people would otherwise never treat a nine-year-old boy like they treat me once I put this helmet on.”
If that nine-year-old is putting on a Magic Helmet, the adults around him all too often put on their Moron Helmet. And, all of a sudden, a normal dad is climbing up the boards like Spider-Man.
To be honest, I’ve had the Moron Helmet on myself a time or two. Hockey can be a very passionate game, and we can get very emotionally connected to the outcome of our children’s games. I remember being in situations where the score is tied, and we’re in the last seconds, and all of a sudden, the official makes a call that I don’t think is a good one, so I say out loud, “Ahh! How could you make that call? It’s ridiculous!” Yeah, I know, I had my Moron Helmet on. But not for long.
So where does this moronic behaviour come from? It’s not present in other minor sports as much, or at all. The answer is, part of the reason minor hockey ends up having so much moronic behaviour from parents, spectators, coaches, and others, is that hockey behaviour is learned from spectating professional games.
Fans enter hockey arenas to be part of the crowd, booing, hissing, clapping, cheering, and eating, and to be drawn into the drama of the game. The hockey stars are paid professionals, and people attend the game to be entertained, not just to see who wins. Some of the tickets even sell for hundreds of dollars. It’s not uncommon to hear of a family going off to a hockey and dropping five hundred dollars on a hockey game, if not more. That again is how passionate people are about the game.
So when they are there, they expect to be entertained. They expect to enjoy the event. They expect to get fully engaged, cheering for fights and injuries as well as goals scored and plays made. They scream at the referees, and they jeer the other team. The kind of behaviour that is acceptable at a major ice arena is not acceptable rink side at a kids’ hockey game.
The moron helmet has to be left in the truck, or in the car. It can’t come into that arena. And when you arrive there, you actually have to take on a leadership role. You are an adult – a role model for these kids. Instead of acting moronically, you have the opportunity to actually become somebody that’s so observant to moronic behaviour that you’re going to start to invoke change.
When Spider-Man is climbing up the glass, you will be the one to tug his pant leg and ask him to step down. All adults who are associated with minor hockey have to get engaged and solve the problem.
People need to step up and become more involved. That is the real solution to this problem, yet again. The top down approach, where Hockey Canada works with the branches, and the branches work with the local associations, and the local associations work with coaches, and the kids and players will work with the coach and the parents – won’t work. Parents have a much larger role than simply paying the registration fees and then putting their kids into the hands of others. In fact, they have the most important role.
Once a parent makes the choice to put their child into minor hockey, their job is to educate their child as well as they can. They also need to make a committed effort to become educated as to their role as a parent. It’s not as easy as it might seem on the surface! Materials for both of these are available through Hockey Canada online.
What this ultimately comes down to is that playing hockey as a part of Hockey Canada is not a must. It’s a membership. It’s a privilege. It’s not an obligation. It’s a choice that you make, and once you make the choice as a parent, you should get your child involved, so they can understand exactly what the commitment is that you are making. There is an expense commitment. There is a time commitment. There is a volunteer commitment. There is a commitment to educate your child, in order to make sure they understand what they are doing. There is a commitment to make sure you’re a proper custodian of the environment which you’re in. In other words, you commit to be a defender against bullies, and someone who can help curb moronic behaviour in others (and yourself).
If we are able to start from the bottom, we will not only transform the behaviour of adults surrounding the game, we will also transform the child. If the child sees great behaviour coming from the parent, they will model that behaviour.
This will foster a community of adults that is not afraid to call someone out when they violate the Fair Play rules, or when they do something moronic. They will not be afraid to replace a coach who is inappropriately leaving children alone in a dressing room.
At the end of the day, we are talking about adults embracing a leadership role as it relates to the game of hockey. Being a leader is part of being a parent, and this is the logical extension of that role.
I will assume that the vast majority of people are very good people, so in that context we have a leadership role here to care for others, to treat others like we want to be treated, to make sure that we keep our Moron Helmet off our own head, and whenever we see somebody who maybe slips up, we step in as leaders and advise that person something like, “Hey, you know, that’s really not the most appropriate behaviour,” or, “That really wasn’t very Respect-in-Sport-like.”
The point is, we are the adults. We are the real leaders of this minor hockey organization. You shouldn’t be relying on the President or the Board of Directors, in isolation, to step up and take a stand. They are not the most powerful people in hockey. You are.
I love the game of hockey. Heck, I am a Canadian. I have played the game, and I coached kids to play the game. I still get out there and referee every season.
That’s where I’m coming from. Because I love the game so much, I see that if we don’t start to change things from the bottom up, I see the game eroding. But I see the path forward, and I see steps being made – and we have the ability to shape the future of minor hockey in Canada.
At the end of the day, it’s about our kids. We want the best for them. We want them to be safe, but also to be exposed to new experiences, and incredible challenges. From the ages of five to 18, we want our kids to hear the cheer of the crowd, feel the thrill of a goal, experience the disappointment of a tough loss. We want them to become great skaters, good puck handlers, and ultimately, good people.
That’s all this is about; allowing children to play this unbelievable game, having unbelievable experiences that they’ll cherish for the rest of their life just as we had as children. My dad was in the stands cheering for me, and I was in the stands cheering for my son. My hope is that he’ll be there in a decade or more, cheering for his own son. There is a great future ahead for minor hockey in Canada if we make a concerted effort today.
Let’s work hard to make the concepts of the Magic Helmet and the Moron Helmet irrelevant in a discussion about minor hockey. Children should play, adults should lead, and there should be only one objective in mind: respect. Let’s bring this game back to its basics: an unbelievable game with a stick and puck on ice.