GatewayRedbirds.com

I need to vent a bit here. I coached my sons Dek hockey team this season. Dek is basically glorified street hockey. No skates but there is a rink with goals and you play 3 on 3 plus a goalie on each side, and you play with a ball.

We lost in the semi finals of the playoffs today 3-2. It was our first loss (we went 8-1 in all). After the game, the other team refused to shake our hands! They accused us of playing dirty. Their coach was the only one that came out to shake hands and he did it mockingly. When he got to me, he told me I needed "to get my players under control" or something like that. He did this in front of our kids.

There were 2 or 3 times where one of their players took the brunt of a hit. One in particular was bad. But it was never on purpose. We had a big size advantage and our kids played hard. It's the playoffs! I know these kids and they'd never do anything like that on purpose. They just wanted to win and were going hard after the ball. Also, I pointed out to their coach that we had one of our kids get hurt too (he was slashed on the foot really bad and we had an injury delay and he had to sit out a while). Is there anything worse than a sore winner?

I don’t know this guy at all. I have my suspicions about why they were so sore. He also coaches ice hockey (I don't). He had several kids that play ice hockey on his team and we only had 3 out of 12. I think this is his way of showing off or something, like I don't take his precious sport seriously enough or something. This is just a guess on my part but over the years I've noticed hockey people often do "gatekeeping", which is bad. Like you aren't a "real" hockey player/fan/coach unless you live and breath it year round or something. Great way to grow a sport.

But the idea that our kids were playing dirty, or that I told them to play dirty is bonkers. We just don't have those kind of kids, and I'm a giant wimp myself. We did have a lot of big kids that played hard and wanted to win though.

I debated whether I wanted to talk to the people in charge of the league, but after some thought, I sent them an email. I figured I don't need this guy badmouthing me if I want to coach again. So I wrote them an email with my side of the story. We'll see what happens if anything.

You should have dropped the gloves right there and kicked the mess out of him. If he's got so much ice hockey cred, he'd respect your willingness to scrap.

Like I said I knew nothing about this guy. I still have not heard back from the league people about what they learned (if anything) from talking to the ref or the other coach.

However, my wife and I did some asking around to some friends-of-friends who had kids on some of the other teams. More than one person told us this guy is a problem coach and should probably be booted from the league but they are too chicken to do it. He has accused other teams of playing dirty more than once, I guess. Again, if you have a problem with how I coach, come talk to me outside the rink somewhere. Don't make a scene in front of the kids, who did nothing wrong IMO. (Not that I feel like I did anything wrong, either). I think I will try coaching again next year and there are already a few things I'm planning to do differently. Other than this one incident, it was fun.

Oh but if that guy is coaching again I'm going to have to think about how I'll deal with that. Unless he apologizes I sure as heck don't plan on shaking his hand but I do want my players to shake the hands of the other players after the game. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.