COACH'S CORNER
BY RICHARD CLEROUX
oaching high school hockey for the first time last fall, I watched a 14-year old I've known since his Brewer Novice hockey days as he fought back tears.
It was after the Lisgar High School hockey team tryouts at McNabb Arena. I looked him square in the face and shook my head slowly. "Not this year, fighter," I said. "Not this year. Maybe next. Sorry about that."
He knew why he was cut. I forced a cheap, nervous grin on my face and felt an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.
Without a word, he turned, humped up his hockey bag and took long, deliberate strides towards the heavy wooden doors of McNabb Arena and into the early-darkening winter afternoon outside.
He never said thanks or even good-bye. He never looked back; he just kept moving. He wasn't about to let his old Novice coach, nor any of the guys at the tryouts, see him crying.
It was tough to cut him. He had scored such a nice goal during the last tryout practice. He didn't make the team for two reasons, age and size, even though he is a prime candidate to play competitive hockey.
But we had 17 and 18 year olds (grade 12 and 13) trying out. They were easily twice his size. A responsible coach doesn't throw in a little 14 year old kid with guys that size and age.
Coach Brian Bourns, Tony Clarke and myself had to cut a lot of good players because they were just too young. Like the other Ottawa high schools in our league, there's just one team per high school.
So the 18 spots on the team go to the oldest, strongest, biggest and best players. And that leaves out younger, promising players. "Too bad, put on some weight and try again next year, kid." Some understood and others didn't.
The problem, if it is one, is that there's been an incredible boom in the popularity of high school hockey in recent years in Ottawa. We had more players trying out for the Lisgar team than many competitive teams.
There are now two 10-team high school hockey leagues in Ottawa. Crowds are turning out for games, and there are even write-ups in the newspapers. Soon the games may be on community television. One high school league is a contact league. Ashbury College has a team in it. The second league is non-contact. Lisgar and Glebe play in that league.
Hockey is so popular, that last year somebody said "Maybe we should have a girls' high school hockey league?" And before they knew it, they had 18 girls hockey teams playing in a competitive league. Boom, just like that, faster than you can drop a puck in a face-off. So maybe, just maybe, it's time to set up a high school league for our younger players, 14 and 15 year olds, the ones that keep getting cut year after year until they turn 17 or 18.
There's a need for it. House-league hockey isn't what it used to be. The Ontario Government cut recreation grants to municipalities. The municipalities like Ottawa passed it on to arenas like Brewer where some house-league teams paid more than $80 an hour for ice this year. So many teams have cut back on ice-time.
Some Brewer teams are down to a "10 and 20" solution (10 hours of practice and 20 hours of games a year). That's hardly hockey. Going up to competitive level hockey is only an answer for some. My son played competitive Pee Wee with the East Ottawa Vanier Voyageurs this year. They had 60 hours of games and 40 hours of practices. Now that's hockey. But not every kid wants or can take that much hockey.
High school hockey, with a 13 game schedule and late afternoon games (time off school if you have the marks) comes in as a nice add-on between house-league, with once-a week on the ice and competitive hockey, with three nights a week on the ice. But for high school hockey to succeed, it has to serve the younger players as well as the older, better players.
A new league was formed for girls. If they did it for the girls, we can do it for the younger players in our high schools.
We'll need Old Ottawa South parents to get behind the idea, teachers in every high school to help us (and that will mean recognizing the Ontario Government took away the one-hour a week they used for organizing sports activities) as well as hockey coaches to volunteer.
I've already got one dad interested, Claude Faubert whose son Jean- Pascal will be going to Glebe. And Wendy Daigle has expressed an interest. Her son Lucas Zinn will be going to high school next year.
Now is the time to act. We'll need Immaculata and Canterbury and several other schools too. We need interest expressed right now. I'm willing to talk to coaches about the joys of coaching high school players who have no illusions about hockey careers and are into the game only for the love of it. It's a totally different experience from coaching older competitive level 14 and 15 year olds.
You can write to me at my e-mail cleroux@istar.ca or send me a letter here at OSCAR, or to my home 34 Bellwood Ave. K1S 1S7. We can do this for our youngsters. I don't want to see any more of my players crying ...or sent home for another year.