It was 2 in the morning, Saturday.
We had just gotten beat by a touchdown in Bumfuck, Wisconsin.
The coaching staff was maxed out, stressed out. Absolutely on fumes.
To blow off some steam, we found a bowling alley across from the hotel and we headed over.
It was dark. Not just outside, but inside of me.
The streetlights from the hotel lit a path inviting us over to this bowling alley. I needed a light for my soul…
I felt completely out of my body at this point.
The season was wearing on me.
The losses.
The players getting into trouble off the ice.
Compounded, compounded, compounded.
I needed to bowl to feel something. Anything.
Wasn't my idea to head across the street though…
My assistant coach/coaching mentor/team owner was trying to keep me alive.
Not in the literal sense, everything was fine there.
But the emotional, spiritual, and psychological sides of me were absolutely burning out.
We walked in, we got our shoes, we played a couple games, tried to have some laughs.
We walked out of there, and my phone said 2am. We said goodnight to the lucky coach who got to stay on the first floor of the hotel and headed for the stairs…
Now, it was just me and my buddy who was rooming with me from out of town.
He was on break from professional hockey over the holidays, and we walked down the hallway together.
All the players are rooming on the same floor as us and as we walk up the staircase, I hear voices…
Our players' voices.
And then I hear some doors shutting.
They're all awake.
Every single one of them.
Playing video games in their room or doing whatever kids do in junior hockey after you got beat by a touchdown that doesn't involve going back to the drawing board, licking your wounds, or recovering. And giving a fuck that you just got embarrassed that badly.
Going to bed, getting some sleep and resetting was not on the menu for them.
I walked by all of the noise…
My buddy Shaun looked at me as we kept walking down the hallway and he started prodding:
“Go back there and say something.
Step up.
Be a leader.
You're the coach of the team.
You're not going to say anything?
Really?
You're just going to keep walking?
I can't believe you.
Are you serious?
Drew, come on.
You have to say something.
Drew?”
I kept walking…
I didn't feel like I needed to defend myself to Shaun.
But when we got back in the room I told him what I was doing… Because he wouldn’t let it go…
My style and preferences as a coach… Most people don't ‘get it’.
Most people my age and the people older than me who coach in this game were coached by coaches they unknowingly perpetuate.
They haven't broken the cycle of using Force.
I have.
What would those coaches have done? What did Shaun want me to do?
Use Force.
They would knock on every single one of those doors, get visibly upset, maybe start screaming and demand that everyone go to bed.
But the question that I always had when that happened to me was, I wonder what the rest of the players think of this?
Is Coach handling this in the best way?
And sometimes we would talk about it and sometimes we would just comply and go to bed.
But the thought remained.
What are the players saying to themselves or amongst themselves after something like that happens?
After a coach, “lays down the law” or screams and yells at you?
Hawkins would classify this way as Force.
Swinging your dick, using fear, shame and the like…
Not my bag.
The way that I coach was reiterated to me a few days ago at the time of this writing.
I was talking to my coaching mentor who was giving me feedback after a podcast episode where he felt I was a little too self-critical.
He reassured me that there wasn't really much more I could do in those two years with the junior team.
And he said something to me that encapsulates what I do in situations that I just described in this hotel room.
What I do when players go out to play the game.
What I do in practice when players are going through something new for the first time.
He said, “Drew, I always had your back.
I was going to give you enough rope as your coaching mentor to let you hang yourself. But as soon as I saw you tie it to a tree, I was going to step in.”
What Shaun didn't understand in the moment is exactly what Todd told me on the phone.
When Shaun was prodding me to ‘step up, to be a leader’, whatever that means.
To be strong.
He didn't understand that I was employing what Hawkins would classify as Power.
I believe players need enough rope to hang themselves on.
That's the true way that lessons are going to sink in.
If they got beat by two touchdowns the next night, which honestly, it was closer than it should have been to that…
Then maybe they would have learned the lesson.
Then maybe our next road trip, they would have reset, got a good meal in them and went to bed at a decent time to prepare their bodies and minds to be better the next day.
I gave them enough rope to hang themselves because I’d rather coach In-Power than with Force anyday of the week.
Update Added 12/6/2023:
And I used a razor that holds up to truth…
Introducing the “Just Don’t Screw Them Up” Razor:
Assume doing nothing is better than acting on current programming
Many of you might think my friend Shaun was right and that I needed to ‘be a coach’ at that moment. To ‘correct’ them. Maybe even to yell.
But here is why doing ‘nothing’ would have been better… Because neutrality is love. And shame, fear and guilt would have been offering my players hate.
Easy does it Drew! Neutrality is love? Come on, you can’t be serious…
Let’s look at the map:
Reminder: Love first appears at level 200.
Shaun wanted my pride to coach to take over (175, no love)
Shaun wanted me to get angry at what they’d done (150, no love)
Shaun wanted me to inject them with a bit of fear (100, no love)
All of these levels a ‘normal coach’ would have experienced would spew destructive energy.
Doing nothing is not destructive, in fact, neutrality calibrates at 250, which means there is love in the message of not ‘sending a message’.
As a coach, until you level up your consciousness, use the new razor. Otherwise, your ‘normal’ programming destroys and separates instead of joins and unifies…
Suicide references aside, the most rewarding part of those 3 years together with the IceHawks and. Vipers was to see your instincts and conviction develop.
If I saw something that I was almost certain wouldn’t work, I’d instigate a discussion. If it was a coin flip, I’d let it play out so both of us could learn from the results. If it SHOULD have worked, I still enjoyed and learned from the reasons that it did not.
I hold firm on the fact that the players we had didn’t know what they didn’t know. You were teaching chess, they were playing checkers. North Korea doesn’t know how productive democracy could be…