Parents are Important.

Our hockey building has a dual purpose. In the summer the arena is turned into a rodeo ground and in the late fall it is a hockey arena. Suffice to say in the fall it is the parent’s responsibility to transform the rodeo arena back into a hockey arena. This involves putting up the boards and glass to form the hockey rink. Then comes the laying down of the ice. In the meantime the building must be cleaned from top to bottom due to the amount of dust that is created during the rodeo season. It also has to be painted and supplies have to be ordered for the concession area for the upcoming season. This is done by parents who have volunteered their time and effort to make sure that our children have a clean and presentable place to practice and play hockey. Here is only one of the reasons why parents are important.

The running of the hockey program in our community is all parent participation. They are responsible for the setting up of the arena, the running of the concessions, the maintenance of the building, the coaching, the finances, the equipment, running the clock, recording the game in the score book, taking money at the door, running the penalty boxes, and maintaining the integrity of the hockey program. Parents are also responsible to make sure the child gets to their game both at home and away. This sometimes means making reservation at a hotel to stay in for the weekend.

The most important aspect of parent involvement is being there to watch and support the player and the team. Parents as a whole are very positive and the game goes smoothly, but there are times when prejudice about a team makes the parent voice their opinions. Like when during a game you can see blatant calling of penalties on one team and not the other then parents will get upset and take a stand. I'm not saying that mistakes are not made by referees and that they can see everything but when it happens over and over again to one team then there is a problem. I'm also not saying that parents can't get a little too aggressive in defending their players and that sometimes there are other less confrontational ways to handle a dispute.

I'll give you an example of a game that my girls played a few years back that this happened. We were at an away game and got on the ice to play the game. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until our girls got called for penalty after penalty and the other team was not getting a single one. The referees were an older man and a very young boy who looked like he could have played for the boys’ team for this town. In the crowd were some of the boy’s hockey players and they were there to support their home town girls. One of the parents on our side noticed that the boys were lined up along the glass and were signaling to the young referee to make calls on our girls. So some of our parents then decided that this was enough and got down from the bleachers to go stand by the glass themselves and try to make their side heard also. Unfortunately some of them got kicked out of the game due to yelling at the referees. We did win the game but let’s say it is one of those games I do not wish to repeat. We could have handled it in a different way by filing a formal complaint against the referees in this instance.

Parents are important in all sports to let players know that you support them , that they can count on you to be there for them, to show them how to act, and how to have good sportsmanship skills.