Coach Dale was my roller hockey coach and one of my developmental skills coaches up until 8th grade. I was good before I worked with coach Dale, but I wouldn’t be even close to the hockey player I am right now without him. Next year I will be playing my first year of juniors, most hockey players can’t say the same, and I owe a lot of my success to this point to coach Dale.

Still to this day I think back to his catch phrases he would always say to us that proved themselves to be true time and time again, “It’s tough to beat a team twice.” “The puck can move faster than any player can skate.” “Be good at what you’re good at.” There are plenty more that I still think about and use to this day, even outside of hockey. “Be good at what you’re good at.” applies to everything in life. If there is something you are better than most at, continue to be good at that thing. He even created a set play called “norm” that I have in my back pocket when the situation arises. Coach Dale also taught me crucial skills that my game is based around, and my hockey IQ (the best part of my game) was excelled purely because of coach Dale’s brilliant coaching.

Coach Dale’s coaching style is something I had never experienced before, and haven’t experienced since. He actually cared about me as a person and he looked at me like a person and not just like a player. He always had my well-being in mind and cared about me getting better and that was all. Obviously he played to win, but to him, if we won and didn’t get any better, did we really win? At the time, I had no idea how important that was until I had the exact opposite and hated it.

I had plenty of coaches that would scream and belittle us, but not because they cared about me as a person, they wanted me to get better to give them a better paycheck and they didn’t care how bad they were beating me or my teammates down and they didn’t care when kids were quitting not even halfway through the season because they couldn’t take it any more. Whereas coach Dale might yell at you and be really hard on you, if he knows you can handle it, but it’s only to make you a better hockey player as well as a better person, and he doesn’t care about the result he is focused on the process, and he taught me to do the same.

I wish more coaches were like coach Dale and were invested in me as a player and person not just for a paycheck, but legitimately care about my future and want me to reach my full potential the way he did and still does.