ADM Kids

Take it from someone who has run five marathons: The hardest part is not the beginning, and it surprisingly usually isn’t the ending.

The hardest part is the long miles in the middle when the freshness of the starting line is many miles away but so is the exuberance of reaching the 26.2-mile goal.

You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and making progress.

So when Guy Gosselin, a Player Development Manager for USA Hockey, used a marathon analogy to describe one of the biggest challenges of 12U hockey it made a lot of sense.

Parents and players can fall into a trap of panicking if camp invites aren’t flowing, or top team tryouts aren’t going how they hoped. 

“It's just hard to be patient sometimes. That's our society today, they want it now,” Gosselin says. “They want the result now and this thing, it's corny saying that it's a marathon, but man, it's a marathon. And you’re right in the middle of it at 12U and that's hard.”

Here are some tips from Gosselin on how to keep everything in perspective at that point in a hockey journey.

A big takeaway is that there is no substitute for hard work when it comes to improving. And it is vital to keep working on age-appropriate development because it can take a while before the work shows up in outcomes.

“We don't want to overwhelm kids,” Gosselin says. “We don't want them to be bored, but, you there’s got to be that challenge there and we need to be patient when we do challenge kids. Because eventually they'll get it. They have to figure it out for themselves too, but we can help guide them to the answer.”

A player who finds that answer a little sooner might gain an early edge over his or her peers, but that doesn’t mean the gap will persist.

“We're promoting that progression from the start, and it looks a little bit different at each age group, but hopefully they're confident hockey players,” Gosselin says.

An essential reason not to panic about a perceived lack of progress at 12U is that it is a time of considerable change. There is still a lot of developmental time to come.

“It's too early to tell how good someone's going to be. It’s way too early. Even the experts can't tell,” Gosselin says. “A lot of times even with older kids you can't predict anything.”

If you are on a B team or didn’t get into the camp you wanted? The advice is to stick with it.

“It really is hard to explain because you just never know what kind of gains a kid is going to make at any age, and sometimes they really surprise you,” Gosselin says. “It can be gains in skill, something that clicks or it could be size. It's all of those things at that age.”

Speaking of size: Don’t worry about it. Tall or short? Big or small? That could change in the journey beyond 12U.

Players who are late bloomers can sometimes gain an advantage over their early-growing peers because they need to pay more attention to fundamentals as they come up through different age groups.

And even if they never have a huge growth spurt, they can still dream big.

“Don't get caught up on size,” Gosselin says. “We have some really top-notch NHL players that are smaller in size.”

When parents find themselves in the middle of that marathon alongside their 12U players, with plenty of time and money already invested in hockey, staying patient can be challenging.

But it’s all a process and an experience.

“You’ve just got to keep getting better, and you’ll get better,” Gosselin says. “A lot of it is common sense.”

And coaches can keep encouraging players to be the best versions of themselves – as that best continues to evolve.

“What helps is creating that experience for kids where they're engaged and they're really enjoying what they're doing,” Gosselin says. “We hope that they are excited to come to the rink every day whether it's a practice or game. Hopefully they didn't get too much, hopefully they didn't get too little, you know, there's a sweet spot there.”