I plan on writing further about my own personal experience as a Hockey Director of a Travel youth club, but I wanted to write an article that gives everyone a peek and a fair idea of what the life of a Hockey director goes through. Please note, that every club and area is different. Some HDs are purely volunteer or receive small compensation. I know others who are considered “full-time” and are making damn near six figures.
That said, we are going to go off my personal history of what one can expect to be done within that role. For transparency, I was paid and considered a full-time employee for an NFP. It was not a glamorous full-time salary (I needed to coach and run my own camps to still even try and clear 50K) but I was hoping it would be a stepping stone into a larger club that paid more. But mainly, I was doing what I loved and being able to work in the realm of hockey.
Here were the expectations for my role within a 12-month span:
Hire and retain quality coaching staff:
This would be finding quality coaches who bring their own assistants with them and assistants for some coaches because they don’t know anyone who would be willing to help. That said, this can be a very difficult part of the job as if you are not aware, many quality coaches are leaving the game due to the bullshit they deal with off the ice whether its parents or politics within a club. Let’s not forget the time commitment that is asked of them when you have them at the rink easily 3 nights during the week plus 1-2 games on the weekend. It’s essentially a part-time job. Looking back on it now, as a coach of just one youth team and working a regular 9-to-5 full-time job, I understand the struggle it is for people to try and dedicate their “free time” to coaching a team that they don’t even have a child on.
Let’s also remember the “quality” part here. It is possible to find someone who is willing to coach a team, but they have a history of toxic behavior on and off the ice that is not appropriate for your club, or they just simply can’t teach the game or move with the “new school” of coaching.
You need to always be available:
I think I spent more time within a hockey rink than in my own living space. I was asked to always be at the rink to evaluate practices, coaches, and the players on the ice. I had to be sure that players were being taught age-appropriate concepts and doing age-appropriate skill work. This would include going on the ice with shorthanded teams or just needing help in general. This isn’t typical for I would say 90% of the youth clubs out there. You’re lucky to have the HD of your local program at the rink a couple of times a week. I was there for every session the club had though as I wanted to be sure I knew exactly what was going on and at one point, was asked by the club’s board to attend everything. Hell, I even traveled to other rinks to check in and watch teams at away games. Again, this isn’t typical, but it’s the job I wanted. You could say I was easily putting in over 40 hours a week in program and coaching-related tasks, most nights getting home from the rink around 11:30 pm and up until 1 pm decompressing or fiddling with some type of email.
I would also be on call 24/7 to handle any coaching issues, team issues, board issues, club issues, player issues, and parent issues (a lot of these). You’d be surprised how much of this goes on and is dealt with daily, including within your well-oiled and running youth programs. Directors are constantly putting out more fires than anything else with their job. Phone calls, emails, text messages, and face-to-face meetings all add up. This and the above are the reason many clubs have division-level directors instead of one main director for their club.
Scheduling and finance:
Unless you are fortunate enough to have enough volunteers within your club, many HDs have to do the scheduling at their rink for all the teams. I was extremely fortunate to have someone in place to do this for me and work with the rink on purchasing our ice. Don’t forget to add in the time and energy it takes to make sure you are helping and creating a budget for the program. This includes coaching compensation, finding outside vendors for equipment (jerseys and such), or skills/goaltending training companies. The only real budgeting and scheduling I dealt with was running summer camps and clinics. This can be a bit time-consuming but not as bad as scheduling an entire program. Again, I was extremely fortunate.
Creating teams and tryouts:
This would be typically the most stressful and agonizing time of the year for an HD, especially like myself who oversaw a smaller club. You’d think being a smaller club would make this time easier but WRONG! Every season we would get players who would be picked off and or recruited by the larger clubs that played in a higher tier of AA hockey, and while our coach’s abilities and the training we offered helped replace those players from within, it still would hurt our numbers overall at age levels and lessen our rostering numbers. I don’t know about many other HDs, but I would personally call or email families starting at the end of June/early July to find out if they would be registering the following season, and if not, I would have to throw my salesman/customer service hat on and try and resell them on why staying with us was better for their child. Maybe the family had a bad experience with a coach or had visions of grandeur about moving their child to higher levels of play (it typically didn’t happen), but I had to do my absolute best in trying to retain those players, practically almost selling my soul.
As I had access to the internal numbers, I would check daily (to a fault) on where we were registration-wise, which was not healthy, just so that we could come in at the last minute every year with at least two teams at every level adequately rostered. If you needed a goalie consider yourself toast.
Did I mention the parent issues? Because if not, we must remember every player deserves to be on the top team and if they don’t get that spot the family may leave (remember you need them for your second team that is damn near thin) or you get to spend plenty of hours on the phone or at the rink listening to why their child is better than a kid who did make that team (if looks could kill, there wouldn’t have been anything left of me to identity).
Would I do it again?
I’m not so certain at this point in my life if I would want to jump back in the saddle of being an HD again. The unnecessary stress for what amounts to a game (though it is big business) I wouldn’t say at this time in my life would be worth it. I missed out on a lot socially due to being in the rink most evenings and I don’t think as a full-time position it offers much long-term stability. I do enjoy being a coach more, especially only having to worry about 14 players much better than over 100. That said it was an eye-opening and interesting experience, one that I’m glad I was able to try for 4 years.
