Mr. Parcels recalls coaching teams of 14- and 15-year-olds through NHL-calibre seasons, where they would travel around the province and play 80-plus games between September and March. Every additional game added to the already considerable cost, but parents often wanted more chances for their kids to compete, not fewer.
I am astonished at the lengths to which some hockey parents will go to in the hopes that their son will make the NHL. Grinding these boys through 80 games a season, and summer hockey camp on top of that, is not going to turn most of them into future pros, and worse, is more likely to burn them out and turn them off the sport for good.
The return on investment just isn't going to be there for 99.9% of the parents who do this, and yet they keep on spending piles of money that could be better spent investing for their sons' educations and their families' financial security.
Given all that, who knows how many families are bankrupting and tearing themselves apart chasing the NHL dream? Who knows what boys could have made the NHL but for the insane costs of minor hockey, or for being burnt out before their time?
And this doesn’t include the dental bills.
Swimming and actually even more so diving is comparable as the child moves into a national competition. Pretty much every sport has this issue. The BB kids who make it to level I watched last night (first KU season game) were identified while still in middle school and, in some cases, taken out of the ghetto and put in private schools.
In the States this is called “women and minorities hardest hit”.I guess small ponds and lakes only freeze up there in the richest areas.
Welcome to the world of youth sports. Speed training, traveling teams, steroids and concussions.
My opening line to my players and their parents at the first practice is, “who wants to play in the NHL?” a few hands go up. Then I tell them the reality. “It takes 3 hours a day, 360 days a year for 15 years. That’s the minimum it will take for you to even think about whether you can make the NHL. “
I have been coaching ice hockey for 20 years. You know if a kid is good enough. Problem is the parents will never listen. They will pay the 7-10 grand a season for the kid to wear a AAA team jacket even though he may see little game time. I tell the parent to invest that money for the kids college and let him play Tier 2 and have a good time. Maybe they will play junior and get another 4 years after that in college. Parents don’t care.
In addition, like most sports, you get the camps that promise kids that they will get on the radar of college coaches. I have had parents yell at me because I wouldn’t write the recommendation letter for their introduction. I would tell the parent, your kid is playing house rec hockey and cannot skate backwards. They don’t care. The one time I wrote the letter for a parent, it was because I was forced to by the association. I wrote the letter , the parents paid the fee, took their kid to Vegas for the camp and the kid lasted all of one drill before they thanked him and sent him packing.
For the ones who are good enough, the coaches know they exist and will help where they could. That’s why there are scholarships. The cost of hockey in the long term is the same as going to college. It costs a lot of money. The cream always rises to the top.
This story is bunk. There is no one that is clearly good enough to play, not playing. And further, and more specifically, any one of the Subban kids could have played for a New England prep school, played good hockey and received a great education too. After that any Ivy, Hockey East or NESCAC school would have taken them and it would have been free - were they good enough and at least close to smart enough. Finally, I know from great experience, these kids the schools pay for are not economically elite as the article suggests. Parents that want to pay for kids that aren’t good enough, yet, perhaps with fingers crossed, are simply using their prerogative as free adults. Who is anyone to suggest its a bad thing for parents to invest time and money into their kids?Anything to the contrary is busybodyness.