Re: Brown Bears 2010 - 2011 - Dawn of a new Era
I've been reading the Brown threads for the last 2 years. The posters expressing their dissatisfaction with the coaching situation are usually, not always, Brown parents who are hugely disappointed after the family and player invested in Brown hockey. Any parent who has supported their daughter's hockey career to the extent that they get onto a D1 college team has been involved with a lot of quality hockey teams and knows when players and a team is responding to good coaching or not. This group has been there for the games, observed for themselves, and listened to their daughters. The forum is an outlet to express their legitimate disappointment. I suspect that they haven't been the exception, but rather hold the same opinion as Brown parents who aren't on this forum. Left to them, the Brown coaching threads would have been a lot less abrasive and a lot shorter.
The posters who go after them for expressing their dissatisfaction with the coaching are, again usually but not always, posters who comment on a lot of threads on a lot of teams, games and so on. They are outsiders looking in and seem to hold that their opinion must trump the parents for no other reason that I can see except that they believe they are the experts on the game. Rather than see it from the parents viewpoint and empathize, they seem determined to school the parents. They are the ones making the threads abrasive and keeping them going.
I've personally only seen Brown play once this year when my daughter's team played them. Based on what I saw, there is enough talent on the Brown team to take their share of games. Not run the table, but take their share. The quality of the players is not the issue. Their performance as a team is. And that is coaching.
If we are going to open up last year's discussion and the justifications, let's start with your concept that parents of players are right in venting semi-anonymously (they identify themself as a parent) on a public forum about a coaching situation in a way that reflects badly on them. I would be just fine if that poster said I am Janey's mom and I think the coach should be fired because... I would also be fine if the person who started the flame-fest didn't identify themself as a parent as this forum is all about the FANS (the fan forum) commenting on the game. However, once a self-proclaimed (never really proving it by outing her(him?)self) parent starts publically throwing their child's coach under the bus, it has many bad ramifications not only for the program, but the other players and families in that program as they have had suspicion cast upon them. And after discussion with a few others as to the identity of the suspected offending parent, the motives of the offending parent (lack of ice time) just make hockey parents all over creation cringe.
To this, I have to say for the good of the game, enough.
There is a saying, players play, coaches coach, and parents should cheer from the stands. If you don't like the team you are on, work with the organization or leave it and find another. I will admit that I have had a word with higher ups in an organization about a coach's efforts that may have contributed to that coach's removal from duties in the past. I have also had word with higher ups in another organization about things that weren't handled within the bylaws, didn't receive the time of day and chose to move hockey elsewhere. Through all of this, I've never snuck off and anonymously sniped on a public forum about either organization.
And now that my daughter is in college hockey, I view the situation as her responsibility. I am a sounding board to her, but if she ever has an issue with the coach or athletic department, it is entirely up to her as to how to address the situation. The parents receive communication and invitations to events from time to time. I thank the coach, but not living near the school decline the invitations. I have let go of the responsibility for my adult daughter's hockey career. I only wish more parents would figure out whose life they are managing. I still smile when her she and/or her team plays well although I go to great lengths not to express my bias here - (too many folks here who give me the creeps).
Yeah, the scope of my involvement in this thread has spread beyond the original anonymous parent. Primarily, it has to do with those other members who support the method of this poster publically poisoning the well from within. And yes, unfortunately, they don't get the idea of being discreet for the good of the team/game and continue to escalate the issue under the guise that any noise is good noise.
Am I schooling the parent? Yes indeed.
One last thing. I disagree that "Any parent who has supported their daughter's hockey career to the extent they get onto a D1 college team has been involved with a lot of quality hockey teams and knows when players and a team is responding to good coaching or not." Most parents, even those who played the game growing up, know little or nothing about coaching and cannot learn it from watching games. One of my favorite coaches my daughter has ever had was guy who played a little hockey, but was an excellent lax coach (championship quality). When his daughter took up the ice game, he got involved because others did not. While it was obvious that he wasn't the most sophisticated on the X's and O's of teaching ice hockey (and he admitted it up front), he had a personality on the bench that made girls want to play for him and play hard. Did he make any miracles happen? No. Did he make these girls better hockey players? Debatable. Were the girls happy with the situation? As much as their parents would allow them to be. Many families were loyal for years. Others left to go elsewhere. What I am saying here is that it isn't just the coach who determines whether the girls respond to good coaching. It is the whole environment including the expectations of the girls themselves and the families. Lots of parents have seen "bad coaching" and readily call it out to their children. It is a self fufilling prophecy when the child acts upon the negativity of the parent-coach. To the extent that the real coach can eliminate those elements from the team, they can allow their own coaching to be built upon and have their own fate in their own hands (not the parents).
You may say there is plenty of talent and perhaps Digit has not been doing her due diligence in screening families for her program and that I can fault her with. It is her team and her failings in screening families results in posters like the originator of this problem continuing to sap the energy of the girls she worked to recruit.
I thank you for your observations however and appreciate the civility of the discussion.
