As you all know, Count Jr plays minor hockey in the town where we live. Hockey is not as big in our suburb as it is in other areas around where we live as lacrosse is the big sport. As evidence of that, we have only 24 H3 players (those born in 2003) and last year in H2 we only had 14 players. However, same city has about 5 or 6 lacross teams.
Granted, lacrosse is much cheaper, season is only three months long instead of seven, competes only against baseball and not soccer, you don't need a lot of extra skating lessons or camps etc but I do wish our city cared more about hockey than lacrosse.
My town does lose some good players to a local elite hockey club and part of me wonders if it is because so many in my town care more about having fun than winning. When I was young, they were not mutually exclusive. It was many years ago but in my day, we started playing, keeping score, playing the rules right from the start. Now Hockey Canada is big on skill development which is great and fun but I believe winning drives fun. Count Jr's team does not win very often, in fact in many games, it is isn't even close. In the games they have kept close, tied or won, the atmosphere in the dressing room is dramatically different from when they are hammered.
The whole idea of not keeping score for the first three years that Hockey Canada has is silly in my view. The players all know the score, they know when they won, if they lost, who scored, how many they scored etc. Why do we persist in the fallacy that there is no score?
I wish I had the answers but I do know, at least in Count Jr's case, he much prefers winning to losing. I know some organizations in my area care about winning as much as having fun and development. Maybe that is not such a bad thing.
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