2014/2015 Coach Appreciation Letter
Hi Kevin,
Just wanted to say what a pleasure it was to sit in the stands by the players boxes where I always sit when my son refs and watch and listen to the BMHA coaches. These three men in my opinion are three of the greatest coaches that I have seen in a very long time and I believe they should be commended for it. As I sat and watched their games even though the kids were in the penalty box quite a bit never once did those coaches ever raise their voices at anyone, they talked to the kids and let them know what they needed to do to stop getting penalties, they never blamed anyone or anything and when the kids would get upset and try to lay blame either on a child from an opposing team or a ref, the coaches let them know that they were not to blame and that even if you disagreed with a ref's call just get in the box. Throughout the games that I watched of theirs (I watched three) the coaches would even compliment the opposing teams, if a child made a good pass I could hear them say "good pass" or "great save" or "good call" to the refs. If other coaches did as these three do it would change the face of hockey to the positive again. These three coaches that your novice team have are truly in my opinion about the kids and teaching them the game of hockey and not about the score board. Like anyone they want to win but they never made that the focus of the game, they were teaching them all aspects of the game and the one they seemed to focus on the most was sportsmanship and it was so GREAT to see and hear, because in my opinion that is a huge problem in all sports the lack of sportsmanship. I hope that the parents of the kids on the team know how very fortunate their kids are to have coaches such as these.
My son is only 13 yrs old and has been playing for 8 years and has only been reffing for 2 years. Bentley is a very small association and we only have young refs and my son has never had any mentor ship to help him but tries his best and it is as I am sure you know very tough to ref and do it with confidence. After my son had reffed the third game of theirs last weekend the coaches went and talked to him and the other young ref and they thanked them for reffing, told them how well they thought they did and then proceeded to tell them that they really liked how confident they were when making their calls. When we were on our way home and Jason told me what happen his eyes were quite wide and he was grinning, it made him feel good about reffing for a change. From the bottom of my mom's heart I want to thank those three coaches for that. My son is constantly yelled at and has had 30+ year old men swear at him and his ref partner so this is truly a wonderful thing for your coaches to have done and it makes me believe that hockey and reffing could truly change.
If everyone could show the kind of sportsmanship and kindness these three men showed I know we wouldn't have the problems in hockey with players, coaches, refs and parents that we have.
Again thank you to those three coaches for all their kindnesses with all the kids, refs included.
I would love to have the email address of the three of them so I could personally thank them if that is possible.
Have a great day.
Name Taken Out
Bentley Alberta
