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The Right Amount of ‘Chocolate’ at 14U/16U

04/17/2015, 3:30pm MDT
By Michael Rand - Special to USA Hockey

In most cases, we’ve reached the end of the youth hockey season. But if you are a parent of a 14U/16U player, you are probably thinking, “This guy must be joking. Hockey never seems to end.”

And it’s true. Between summer leagues, showcases, off-ice training and simply grabbing some ice at a local rink, hockey can be a 12-months-a-year proposition. But how much is too much, particularly for early teens at a critical stage of development?

To answer that question, we spoke with Mark Dennehy, men’s hockey head coach at Merrimack College, and Jenny Potter, recently named the women’s hockey head coach at Ohio State University.

Multi-Sport Approach

Potter is a four-time Olympian who won a combined five gold medals with Team USA at the Winter Olympics and IIHF Women’s World Championship. She knows what it takes to be elite and she’s committed to having her son and daughter play as many sports as possible.

“The hockey season is a long season,” Potter says. “I’m a big proponent of exposing kids to many different sports. My son plays football in the fall, he does hockey in the winter, lacrosse in the spring. He might skate here and there all year round.”

That means, at times, he might battle hockey players who have been skating year-round, but Potter is convinced that playing multiple sports is the right decision in the long run.

“My son has to compete against kids practicing seven days a week,” she says, “but those kids are going to hate hockey by the time they’re 15.”

Dennehy agrees.

“Children need to be well-rounded,” he says. “The best players I’ve ever coached have been good athletes.”

Too Many Showcases

As giant multi-rink complexes have sprouted up, so too have summer showcases and tournaments. It’s one-stop shopping for teams and players looking to skate, while it also gives scouts and college coaches a look at a lot of players at once. That’s the selling point, anyway. The truth is, scouts and college coaches put much more stock in what players do during the season. Spring and summer showcases carry far less weight.

In reality, if your player is good enough, scouts and coaches will find them regardless of whether they’re skating in so-called exposure showcases.

READ: Gaining Exposure or Being Exposed?

The sheer volume of these events can consume parents (and kids) worried about missing a chance to play and impress. The message from Potter and Dennehy, though, is to avoid overdoing it. Even the pros take a break.

“An NHL hockey player, when their season is done, they put the skates away for about a month,” Dennehy says. “And when they come back, they train. It’s not until late July or early August that they are on the ice playing at all. And these are elite adults.”

Dennehy says research shows that, before the age of 15, single-sport specialization can do more harm than good. As for showcases?

“The only people they benefit are the rink owners,” he says.

Potter suggests something similar: ease back into training and work on some skill development over the summer while also taking time to play other sports and enjoy being a kid.

“Sign up for a showcase at the end of summer when you’re at your best,” Potter says. “I see too many kids being dragged around rinks (during the summer) and they don’t appreciate playing in a game anymore. They play 100 games a year, and it becomes just another game.”

And if your logic as a parent is that kids can’t get enough hockey and just love it so much … well, Dennehy has a comeback to that, too.

“A parent of one of my daughter’s teammates said that,” Dennehy says. “This person is a dentist. I said to him, ‘That’s a great argument. My daughters love chocolate. They simply can’t get enough chocolate. Shouldn’t I let them eat all the chocolate they want?’ Part of parenting is figuring out when enough is enough.”

Know the Answer to ‘Why?’

A final key to finding that summer balance is learning, as a parent, to answer a critical question: why is my son or daughter playing hockey in the first place?

“When my mother put me in hockey, the reasons were simple: to make friends in town and to learn some incredible life lessons,” Dennehy says. “It had nothing to do with an endgame of college or pros. … If you’re putting your son or daughter in a sport and your endgame is high school, college, pro level, you’ve already sort of bastardized the purpose.”

Answering that question is important because the drive for scholarships or getting to the next level fuels a lot of the summer madness, both Dennehy and Potter say.

“I think it’s a cyclical process,” Potter says. “Parents feel like the kids need to be seen because all the coaches are at the event. The coaches go to the event because the other coaches are there.”

Taking a step back can help break the cycle and lead to happier, healthier, better and more well-rounded players.

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Jenny Potter skates as a member of Team USA. The newly appointed Ohio State coach and mother of two is an advocate of playing multiple sports.



Merrimack College head coach Mark Dennehy: "Children need to be well rounded."

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