7-2... Just bad enough to make you really frustrated and hurt your ego, not too bad that you just laugh it off and move on... for those of you wondering what 7-2 is, that was the score of my hockey teams 1st and (now) only playoff game. After the team that I coach (15-17 year olds) went 5-14 this season it made me really think about my skills as a coach; To motivate, to lead, to demand respect and to encourage, and teach. What hurt most was the fact that 1/2 the team had tuned me out by tonight. Its hard to get a bunch of high schoolers to really care about something that they find trivial. yeah, they were just as embarrassed. yeah, they yelled at their goalie and wanted me to pull him after several soft goals. But even harder to take is them tuning out the life lessons that can be learned from losses like this.
First is playing a clean game when your pride is hurt. Its really easy to take a hit when you are winning, its really hard to take a hit and not go head hunting when you are getting manhandled.
Second is to keep playing hard until the final buzzer. Rather than suck up your pride and say you got beat, its so much easier to give up and let them blow you out. That way you can say that you didnt really play your hardest.
third, you may not like everyone on the team but fact is you are stuck with them and you have to deal....
There are alot more, but I am not going to go into them all in this space tonight.

One thing I realized about myself was that after winning a come from behind championship game in my first year of coaching, i thought I could handle any team in any situation. I realized that its time to step back, assistant coach and learn some more.

It is true that character is only truly tested under fire. And it is true that the real man is one who can admit he is not ready for the job, and rather than give up, step into a different role and learn more til his chance comes again... And it will come again.