For the Parents

A few seasons ago, a door closed for my son.

We had followed the one path that had been shown to us, and when the answer came back no, I understood it the only way I could — as the end of the road.

It wasn't. It took me about three weeks of searching to find out that other leagues existed at all.

But the part I keep coming back to is what happened after that.

There was one route I had actually heard of. I knew the name. I'd seen it come up. And somewhere along the way I had quietly filed it under not for us — too far, too expensive, too selective, for other people's kids. I never asked a single question about it. I didn't know enough to know that I hadn't.

It stayed that way until someone outside our club brought it up with me directly. That conversation is the only reason I went and looked properly.

So some of what I was missing had been sitting in plain view. The families around me knew things I didn't. As far as I could tell, they had simply been in it longer. Whatever the reason, I hadn't found anywhere that put those pieces together in a way I could understand.

And the rest of it I had closed off myself. Nobody had to keep it from me. I'd already decided it wasn't ours.

Pathways turned out to be only the first thing I didn't know I didn't know.

Later, when other opportunities came up, more gaps showed up.

One arrived as an email — congratulations, followed fairly quickly by an amount to pay. Elsewhere, a coach called to explain why he wanted my son, and then stayed the person I dealt with when practical questions came up during the season.

I'm not saying one is better than the other. I don't know that, and it isn't the point.

What the difference taught me is that an offer didn't tell me everything I'd have wanted to understand, and that some of what mattered to us wasn't visible before we committed.

So I started writing things down. First what I was noticing, then the questions the noticing produced.

Rink Parent is where that goes — the public record of what I'm learning while I'm still in it. I keep the notes, I turn them into questions, and when a question is worth investigating properly, I go and do that.

I'm a parent, not a coach or a scout. When something needs checking, I check it. When I don't know, I say so.

Six questions I wish I'd known to ask

These come from my own experience, not from research. They're a starting point, not a checklist.

1. If this doesn't work out here, what else exists — and what have I already ruled out without checking? The second half is the one that cost me. Ask both before you need the answer; it's a very different question in September than it is in March.
2. Why does this program want my child? Not whether they want him. Why. In one case I was given the answer without having to ask for it. I hadn't known it was a question.
3. What role do they see him playing? I don't know how much an answer here tells you about the season ahead. I know I never asked, and that I would ask now.
4. How is communication meant to work here, and who is it with? School questions, a problem in December. In one program we were told to bring questions to the scheduled parent meetings; elsewhere, the coach was simply the person I dealt with. I don't know the reasoning behind either, and I couldn't have told them apart from a website.
5. Beyond the price and what's included, what are we actually paying for? Coaching, development, competition, exposure, school integration, travel, environment. Our decision rested on some of these far more than others, and I hadn't separated them out beforehand.
6. What will this ask of the rest of the family? School, transport, routines, money, time, the siblings. For us, the hockey part turned out to be a small share of what the decision actually involved.

And the one sitting behind all six: what don't I know yet that I should be asking?