Quote:
Originally Posted by N-E-B
I'm sure I'd feel different if it was me playing or my kid, but I just can't find the energy to care about this. It's a freaking bantam AA game. Maybe one kid out there MIGHT get a sniff of professional hockey. MIGHT. It sucks but at the end of the day it's just a kids hockey game. Who cares?
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This is kind of where I'm at. I'm surprised it made the news. I've had kids in competitive sports, all through their growing up years. There's a lot of crap that's happened, some that even as a parent, I didn't understand but the idea of taking it to a media source (paper, tv, whatever) would never have even occurred to me. Hockey was one sport my oldest wanted to play but very early on, we chose not to pursue it. When he wanted to start, he was young. We lived in the far north of the province, so any game away was a minimum 2 hour trip and tournaments were often 3 or 4 times that many hours away. So that was a part of the decision process. But, the biggest part of the decision to stay away was attending a couple of games with friends' kids were playing in. Remember, these are really young kids. Most of them could barely stand, so there was no Gretzky business going on, with any of them, even the ones who could skate a little. It was basically two herds of cats bunching up and slipping and sliding down the ice for their game time, and someone just happening to slide a puck in the net, really through fluke, because there was no skill, lol. It was the parents that turned us off and made us back away. The yelling, the screaming, the coaching from the stands, the things they were calling the other kids on the other team - um HELLO? These are little kids. They're just about fun at that point. But there was no fun, not that we could see. Every kid came off the ice looking like someone kicked their puppy and took away their candy. The parents are talking like each and every kid was just seconds away from an NHL deal, and approached the whole process that way. Hell no, didn't want any part of that. If you weren't the parent going into it with that same attitude, holy hell on a popsicle, it got ugly. We didn't want any part of it, for him, or even for us.
The kids played and participated in other sports, quite happily and we were fortunate, their coaches were always amazing. One royal ######head parent on the soccer travel team one year but the kids actually shamed him off the sidelines and then I believe the league dealt with him and he never returned to the sidelines ever again. But yeah, this is part of life. If it's in the rules, then it's in the rules. If you don't like those rules, then challenge the league about it, outside of the game time and get it figured out that way. A royal hissy fit isn't going to change things. There's a process to be followed and we don't all have to like it, but it's how it shakes out. I'm dealing with a process I don't like right now, and I could throw a royal hissy fit and get nowhere or be consistent and ask the questions via the proper channels, and maybe get somewhere. In the end, I may end up with the same outcome, but at least I know I worked all the steps and angles available, outside of a screaming poopfit which no one wins, when it all shakes out.