October is around the corner, so is another season of minor hockey

You know it is a great time of year when you can play golf during the day and hockey at night. I suppose that is what playing hockey in a sunny climate must feel like yearround. In Southern Alberta — I guess we get September.

And yes, we are still in September, although October is only a few days away. Nearly (if not all) Minor Hockey teams here in Lethbridge have been picked and it is now time to settle in for the winter.

Try-outs tend to be a stressful time, especially for parents, and I have seen this first hand at the rinks these past couple of weeks. Getting cut is one of the most heart wrenching feelings for a player, whether they knew it was coming or not, being told by someone you aren’t “good” enough is never something you want to hear — ever. But I will tell you from experience it is also character building. It can tell you a lot about someone when they have to respond to being told they aren’t “good” enough.

The secondary reality is that sometimes coaches and evaluators do indeed make mistakes. The same as mistakes get made by people at work, in relationships, in day-to-day life. And yes, these mistakes can mean your son or daughter is playing at Tier 2 instead of Tier 1 and so on and so forth.

But I promise you as an impartial observer the process used by Lethbridge Minor Hockey to evaluate players is as by the book as you will see anywhere. The evaluators all have significant experience and the process they use is indeed best practice in selecting players for their proper teams.

As parents of children we need to remember what sport is, what it encourages in our children. We need to remember that organized sport is for them and not for us as adults. Because you do not agree with a decision made by evaluators in a sport does not give you the right to insult or yell at other adults.

I want to use this platform as a friendly reminder that again sport is about children, not about adults and I hope going forward our adults can set a positive example and be great role models. Unfortunately, I have seen some negative behaviour around the rinks these past couple weeks and going forward I hope that more people can see and stand up to ensure this negativity stays out of the rink.

Now that I have expressed that, I want to encourage our coaches and players to jump at some of the great development opportunities that Hockey Alberta is offering. Last night we hosted a Career Planning Session for several of our Elite Teams and a Practice Planning Session for several coaches. Coming up on Oct. 16 we will host a Team Building and Leadership Seminar in partnership with the Alberta Sport Development Center. I utilized them last year and they did an incredible job and look forward to hearing them speak on this new topic next month.

Also, time is running out to register for our player programs this winter. My goal with setting these programs up was to target age groups and levels that do not see quality programming opportunities available as frequently as others. For Initiation and Novice players that don’t get many on ice opportunities during the year we will utilize our expertise to offer an Initiation and Novice Advancement Program focusing on Small Area Play.

Goaltenders can sign up for our two goaltender programs that sold out last season. Our female players can register in our Female Development Program that offers mentoring opportunities with the University of Lethbridge women’s hockey team.

For those enthusiastic hockey fans in our community, I encourage you to come watch the Midget AAA team as much as possible this season as they start this week. I promise you this will be one of the more talented teams that has ever come out of this area and will be a real treat to watch this season.

Lastly, I want to say congratulations to the Lethbridge Hurricanes on a great home opener. It is great to see our community once again support this team and the Hurricanes to once again put a great product on the ice.

Although getting an opportunity to work as the goalie coach for the Moose Jaw Warriors this season my praise to the Hurricanes might have to be a little less frequent this season.