In order to be the next great female hockey player, you have to be willing to work hard. But even more importantly, you have to be willing to fail. And I am talking about “fall down flat on your face type of failure”.
There is nothing worth achieving that comes easy. Those players who have reached the highest levels of women’s hockey have gotten there because of their willingness to challenge themselves today to be better than they were yesterday.
You have to push the envelope and put yourself out on the line each and every day in order to get better. That doesn’t mean that you need to be training every minute of every day, but you do need to be pushing yourself as hard as you possibly can when you are training on and off the ice in order to really improve.
There are going to be times that you try out a new move and it fails miserably. There are going to be training sessions where you feel weak, tired and just plain uncoordinated. At some point in your hockey career, you are going to get cut. Hockey is a game of mistakes and failure is lurking around every corner.
You always have the choice to take the easy road or take the much more challenging path to success. My favorite quote of all time is, “If you do what you’ve always done, you are going to get what you’ve always had”. In order to get more out of yourself and take your game to the next level, you have to be willing to fail. Every time you fail, you have an awesome opportunity to learn from your mistakes and become a better player. You might fall flat on your face 9 times out of 10. But that one time where you succeed will be well worth it.
Don’t be scared of failing. Be scared of not improving. Be scared of being the exact same calibre of player this season as you were last year.
Are you willing to put yourself in a position where you might fail? What have you been scared to try? If you are ready to take your game to the next level, share your plan for how you are going to push the envelope and put yourself out on there. I promise you that the effort will be well worth it.
I’ve never been taught how to play the puckn I’m a goalie, until last Thursday but during my game last week I just saw a slow moving puck coming down the middle of the ice I skated out to play it knowing ig I screwed up it’d be in the net, I did that last year.
I played the puck right to my player and I did it a second time that game to the right of my net.
Hi Kim,
Failure isn’t always a bad thing. If you can learn from it, it’s a good thing. If I tried my hardest, its not failure. So, failure sometimes means that I could have tried harder.
Today I did my TFHP, plus 15 minutes on the eliptical, 20 sit ups, 60 10 pound hand weight presses and some balance exercises. I did my homework first! Tomorrow I have a big practice!
Good night!
Amy
The most common place that people put themselves out on the line would be at tryouts, you give it all you’ve got knowing full well that if you fail you most likely won’t make the team, but you still do it. I know there’s some people that won’t tryout because they’re scared they’ll get cut, I was on the fence between being one of those an being a person who was willing to fail. I decided I can’t go anywhere with hockey if I just play Tier 3 and the best Tier 1 team in the lower mainland was one of my two options to tryout for and I went for it.
If anyone is on the fence like I was, even if you don’t necessarily want to go to college or uni to play hockey but you want to be on a good team, just do it, the worse thing that could happen is you get cut and you have to play on your ‘Plan B’ team.
Do whatever it is that you may fail at and do it with confidence, because somewhere inside you is the passion, drive, determination and skill to find a way to accomplish it and if you just can’t find it take away the lesson that you learned and look a little harder because you’re sure to find it at some point.
One of my favourite quotes “When you lose, Don’t lose the lesson.”
I just came back from my semi-final school field hockey game, we lost in strokes. This is my second year and the second year I’ve lost in the semi-finals. I should have stopped the stroke that they scored to win it in sudden death strokes and I should have stopped the one goal they scored in regular time.
How do you deal with losing an entire season on two crappy goals. I’m still teary eyed and haven’t caught my breath yet.
The truth is that the entire season never really comes down to just two strokes or two shots. It is a whole series of events that leads us to that sudden death moment. Maybe someone missed an open net earlier in the game or the red made a tough call or the bounces just weren’t going your way. Remember all you can really control is your attitude and your work ethic. If you did everything in your power to win the game, then that is all your teammates can really ask of you, right?
~ Coach Kim
You’re right, it’s just hard to accept right now. It’s just hard because it was such a weak goal. I guess it’s not all my fault since my players missed or shot at the goalie on all their strokes, but to me i want to be able to be the reason that our team has a banner hanging in our school. It just hurts more because it’s happened my two first years. I’ve got some time to recover, my parents are at the Canucks game so I get the house to myself to gather my thoughts and stuff.
I was a defensemen on my Squirt A Travel team (only girl on boys team), when my coach switched me to winger and I had no clue how to play it. How do I learn my new position fast enough?
The easiest way to learn a new position quickly is to study another player who plays that position. When I first went to college, they changed me from a defenseman to a forward on the first day of practice and I had absolutely no clue what I was doing out there. So I would watch NHL games and study what the wingers were doing to help me figure out where I needed to be position-wise. The cool part is that being a former defenseman really gave me an advantage as a forward. When I would be attacking on the forecheck, I had a great understanding of the defensemen’s tendencies having been one myself. Playing the new position will give you a whole new perspective on the game and is really a great learning opportunity - so embrace it.
~ Coach Kim