Not surprisingly, members of an Atom Local League team and their parents reacted strongly when Centre Wellington Minor Hockey officials decided last week to disband the team.
Two months into the 2014-15 season, and just minutes prior to a Nov. 25 game, the nine and 10-year-old players were informed they would be split up and dispersed to the other teams in their division. The reason, according to parents and the team’s coach, is because the team was just too good (it boasted a perfect 9-0 record).
We found ourselves conflicted when several concerned parents first relayed this story. On one side we wonder why the score matters that much for kids so young in a recreational league. On the other hand, we don’t think disbanding the team is as big a deal as some others clearly do.
One thing should be made very clear: this is not the first time this has happened, and it certainly won’t be the last – locally or otherwise. House league or local league teams are often reconfigured after the start of the season to try to provide a competitive balance among all teams.
But the old guard in us questions why this process is necessary in the first place. The players are evaluated prior to the season and split up accordingly – so if one team ends up beating everyone else, so be it.
For players this young in a local league that should be emphasizing fun over winning or final scores, disbanding a team seems counter-intuitive.
We personally have spent time on Sports teams that have been on both sides of this equation (losing or winning all the time) and we can honestly say there are crucial lessons to be learned from both experiences.
Yet instead of valuable education about winning/losing with dignity and respecting opponents regardless of the outcome, the lesson learned here is that if things don’t go your way, all you have to do is grumble loud enough and someone will wave a magic wand and fix everything for you. That’s certainly not the way things work in the real world.
Alas, as is the case with all minor Sports, and particularly hockey for some reason, we suspect it was the parents who registered the complaints, not the players themselves.
Regardless, the association could have avoided controversy and assuaged concerns by taking action as soon as the Atom 25 team’s dominance was readily apparent (after three games the team had registered 27 goals for and just six against; after five games it had 44 for and seven against). At least then the association would have addressed the problem prior to its own deadline for such issues.
But this late in the season the players have formed relationships and the team has booked tournaments and was not that far removed from playoffs.
Of course, there is another side to this story – including the association’s rules and its take on the matter, as well as the true nature of the complaints against the Atom 25 team – but we couldn’t include it because CWMH officials were mum on the issue.
Despite repeated attempts to get an explanation, the association’s top two officials refused to give us anything, which is doing a disservice to themselves and the association, as it only compounds the problem. We’re not sure what harm there is in providing some basic details. The “no comment” routine simply doesn’t cut it nowadays – and it immediately sets off red flags for those in the media.
At the end of the day, this may not be an earth shattering issue; the kids will get over it and in due time it will become a distant memory. But Centre Wellington Minor Hockey really dropped the ball on this one.
