Arena Notes | Week 1

So I just completed my first weekend as head coach of a hockey team. I’m so out of my depth.

The highlight of the weekend was Coach Matthew saying, “We’ll get worse before we get better.”

I made mistakes that were avoidable: I was late for practice, because I went to the wrong rink.

I made mistakes that were unavoidable: I did a bad job with the drills. I didn’t manage the duration of the shifts for the defensive line. (What’s changing on the fly?")

I made mistakes that I didn’t know was a mistake: I tried talking to the kids during drills. I forgot to bring pucks for warming up before the game.

To be clear, I view these mistakes as opportunities for growth, not as character flows. And there were things I did right.

I showed up. This should not be underestimated, because lots of people didn’t volunteer.

I prepared the game sheet and delivered it on time.

I gave out mini-chocolates after practice, thereby laying the foundation for a candy bar economy.

And oh, we lost the game: 9-4. But I’m comfortable with failure, so that doesn’t bother me.

I’m hoping to only improve, but I think Coach Matthew is right. Progress isn’t linear. It’s not just learning new things, I also have to get good at the basics.

Think about learning a skill, such as playing the piano. The process of learning a piece includes a lot of repetition. The purpose of that repetition is to groove in neural pathways, by getting them to fire repeatedly. And many times during deliberate practice, we will get something wrong that previously we could do reliably. It’s not uncommon when playing a piece that we suddenly start making a mistake in the same place repeatedly. Often the solution isn’t more practice, but a change in the context of practice. These modifications could include isolating the passage, slowing the tempo, taking a break, or moving on and coming back later.

So, let’s continue with some grooving in.