Pee Wees

by Rich Cohen

  The best youth hockey programs don’t let parents coach. It leads to nothing but trouble. The parent-coach either favors his kid or terrorizes him. The standard is higher or lower, but never the same. I have yet to meet the father who can objectively judge his own child; that person doesn’t exist. And even if there were such a person, he’d go unrecognized. Why? Because even if there is no conflict, there is still the appearance of conflict, which is almost as bad. In my day—from here on, let it be known that “my day” means the late 1970s and early 1980s—parent-coaches tended to overcompensate. They set a higher bar for their children, made them work harder and more. If you spotted a Little League baseball team with its best player in right field and batting last, you knew it was the coach’s kid. Today’s parent-coaches tend to do the opposite, using their position to put their kid in the best spot and get him the most at-bats or ice time, for it seems no one will let a single advantage go. This shift—to parents who favor their own from parents who disfavored the same—is part of a general decline in community. As America fades as a dream, it becomes every man for himself.

  Team?

  What team?

  Get your kid to the next level.

  That’s all that matters.

  It was even worse with Coach Rizzo. Not only did he use his position to advance his kid; he used it to hobble others. Having spotted such a kid, he’d short-shift him, scold him when he complained, then tag him with the worst of all labels, “bad kid.” As in, “Yeah, I know he can play, but he’s a bad kid.” I had a sinking sensation as I examined the groupings after that first day: the entire process seemed like theater.

  It struck me as I lay in bed that night, angry and unable to sleep: this is America in microcosm. Today’s hockey tryouts will be tomorrow’s college applications. Today’s A team will be tomorrow’s Ivy League school. The same people who’ve wormed their way into this fix will worm their way into that fix, too. Then there was another, even scarier thought: maybe Micah is simply not as good as I think; maybe I’ve lost all sense of reality; maybe it’s not them, but me. I remembered an encounter I’d had with Coach Rizzo a few years back. I’d been complaining about Micah’s ice time in Squirts and considered moving him to a different program. “Don’t make the classic hockey-parent mistake,” he said, “of thinking your kid is always the best.” But I told myself that this was not about hockey. Not really. It was about right and wrong. I did not want my son to be cheated. I did not want him to learn, at his age, that the world is corrupt. That knowledge would come soon enough.

  I gave him the news in the morning. “You didn’t make the top group.” I did not want him to find out from Brian Rizzo or Niels Andren at school. I did not want him to learn via gloat. I broke it in the worldly way of my own father: “In life, we learn more from failure than from success.” He was bugged but not devastated, or even all that upset.

  Which upset me. Why did I care more than he did?

  * * *

  The second tryout session began after school. The locker rooms were a mix of weak players, kids who could barely skate, and kids who’d been shafted: maybe they’d had a bad tryout, or maybe their game was built on intangibles. Or maybe their parents were too opinionated, or maybe they were “bad kids” being taught a lesson by coaches who did not seem to understand the crucial role “bad kids” have played in the history of the game.

  I told Micah to just go out there and do his best. “Forget what you can’t control, remember what you can. And hustle. The rest will take care of itself.” I said this without believing it, which is the job of parents.

  I sat in the bleachers beside parents who felt exactly like I did. Each one had a gripe. They bitched and pontificated. Meanwhile, I was trying to see Micah through the eyes of an outside evaluator. Not making the top group seemed to free him. It was as if a weight had been lifted; he was having fun. He began to distinguish himself, began to play his game, which is less about precision than verve. He plays with tremendous style, which is one of the most underrated qualities in sports. It’s not just the what; it’s the how. Like the slant of sunlight, or the tone of a particular piece of writing. It’s what remains when everything else has boiled away. It’s a characteristic lope, the joy in the effort. He did especially well during the two-on-one drills. If you put him with a kid who is equally joyful, the game will become what it must have been a hundred years ago, when it was just friends playing on a frozen pond. He scored on a wrist shot, then scored again with a tip-in.

  I played hundreds of hours of hockey, baseball, and softball as a kid. I experienced every kind of big moment, and experienced many more as a die-hard Bears, Cubs, Bulls, and Blackhawks fan. I was at the Superdome when the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1986. I was on Lake Shore Drive the following January, the worst time of year in Chicago, when the same team choked on its own blood. A huge Polish cop, standing amid the depressed multitude, said, “Get your heads up. Tomorrow is another fucking day.” I lived through the Cubs collapse in 1984. I sat outside my house that night and cried. I was in Cleveland when the Cubs slayed their infamous curse, beating the Indians in the tenth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. I cried that night, too. But nothing in my life as player or spectator has matched the satisfaction I feel when my kid scores a goal. All the while, as the play is developing, I’m expecting him to lose the handle, mess up, as life is indeed mostly failure, but this time he doesn’t. I stand and scream when the puck goes in, thinking, “My God, this is how it should always be.” It’s this feeling that makes parents crazy: having it and not having it and chasing it like a hophead chasing a fix. It’s the essence of all sports.

  I congratulated Micah after the second tryout. He’d played hard, done his thing, done it well—you can’t do more. A friend once told me that you should never tell your kid you’re “proud” of him. That makes it about you. He told me you should instead say, “I’m happy for you,” which makes it about him. So that’s what I said outside the locker room: “I’m happy for you, Micah.”

  He nodded, smiled, then asked for “candy-machine change.”

  I ran into Niels’s dad, Blake, on my way out. He was chatting up a member of the board. Niels was in the top group, which had its tryout immediately after ours. (The kids in the upper group stood along the Plexiglas watching the lower group while awaiting their turn. Our kids had to walk through them to get off the ice—a tunnel of shame.) Blake shook my hand, frowned, then looked away, saying, “I hope Micah makes it.” He said it like a fat cat rejecting a petitioner but wishing him good luck anyway. It infuriated me. Then I saw Coach Rizzo. He was talking to the head coach of Pee Wee A beside the pro shop skate sharpener, which cast his face in a glow of orange sparks. Our eyes met. Then he turned away, pretending he hadn’t seen me.

  I would have gone over and made him shake my hand, but another parent pulled me aside. This was Rob Laird, whose son Tiger was in the process, though we did not know it, of being relegated to the B team. Laird had been battling the early stages of multiple sclerosis. “The one compensation,” he’d said at the time, “is medical marijuana.”

  Looking into my eyes, he decided there was no one in more need than me.

  “Check out a mirror,” he said. “You look like one of those guys steering a sixteen-wheeler up a glacier on Ice Road Truckers. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone shout, ‘Micah’s dad fainted!’”

  He handed me a marijuana edible. It was a strip of paper, like a Listerine strip for the soul.

  “How does it work?”

  “Put it between your bottom lip and teeth and just leave it,” he told me.

  “How much should I use?”

  “One works for me,” he said, “but everyone is different. I’d start with a half. Take the rest later if you still need it.”

  I waited till I got home, then took half, like he said. I put it behind my lip and waited. Laird called thirty minutes later.

  “Has it kicked in?”

  “Not yet.”

&
nbsp; “What do you feel?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Just wait,” he said.

  And then, almost as soon as we got off the phone, it hit me. It came like a wave, like in the old Kool-Aid commercials, a tsunami of punch that lifted me up, then broke over my head. I took the half strip on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. I was high by 5:30 p.m. and remained high for at least three days. Went to sleep high, woke up high. Spent the day high, went back to sleep high, woke up high again. I smoked pot in high school and college, but this was different. That affected my mind. This affected my soul. I began to worry I’d damaged my brain, changed my personality, become like a guy I knew in college who’d taken a hundred hits of acid. For the most part, I enjoyed it. Songs struck me as profound, food was delicious. But now and then I panicked. I wanted it to end. I wanted to feel normal. I had bouts of paranoia. I asked myself, “What the hell did Laird give me? Was that marijuana or was it angel dust?” I reached an insane conclusion: “Micah is in competition with Tiger for one of just a few spots on a top team. The drop has made me paranoid. Laird knows Micah is a better player than Tiger and also knows my counsel is a big part of that, so he’s plotted to remove me from the picture. This isn’t a medicinal high! It’s a chemical lobotomy!”

  Even weeks later, long after I believed myself sober, the stony mood would come back, wash over me like a tide. Listening to the radio in my car, I’d think, “My God, this is the greatest song I’ve ever heard.” Then another part of my brain would say, “You’ve heard this song all your life and know it sucks. Idiot! You’re still high!” Sitting in the parking lot of a McDonald’s, enjoying myself too much, the same voice would say, “No way these fries are this good. You’re still high.”

  It was through this lens that I viewed the rest of tryouts. It was like watching my kid through the wrong end of a telescope. Everything looked strange, distant, and very small.

  I was definitely high when I called Micah’s Squirt coach before the final day of tryouts. He’d seen Micah play and knew he belonged on a top team. How did he explain the placement? What did he suggest? He said that Micah did belong on a top team, but to understand him as a player, you had to see him in a game. “Tryouts are not his best,” he said. “The kid’s a gamer. The next session is all scrimmage, with coaches on the ice. If he plays like he can, he’ll be fine.”

  “We already know you’re not making a top team,” I told Micah before he suited up. “That part is over. So forget it and just go out and have fun.”

  Here’s a message for test-takers: no matter how hard you work, nor how well you perform, you still need a little luck. In our case, it came as a result of another parent’s tactical error. Blake Andren, believing his son’s place was secure on a top team, asked if Niels, who had a scheduling conflict, could spend the final tryout scrimmaging with the lower group, which went on an hour earlier. The coaches agreed, so Micah spent that last day in a kind of showcase, lined up across from the kid who’d been one spot above him on the depth chart all year. It soon became clear: Niels was the better skater, but Micah, who scored twice in the first ten minutes, was the better hockey player.

  I was sitting in the bleachers with parents from Micah’s Squirt team, lower-tier folks just like me. Most of us had gone through the three stages of tryout grief: denial, anger, acceptance. We were talking quietly, cursing the arrogance of the top dogs, when a man in a dark suit sat down next to me.

  “Are you Mr. Cohen?” he asked softly.

  I wondered if I’d left on my headlights or parked in a handicapped spot.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We’d like Micah to play in the second session,” he whispered. “Does he have time?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

  “Good,” he said, standing to leave. “And please be discreet.”

  I suddenly felt estranged from the people around me, lower-tier parents, losers like I used to be.

  Christina Egan, with whom I’d been gossiping, leaned over and said, “Did they ask Micah to stay?”

  “Yes.”

  Her lips pursed. She looked at the ice, then said, “Good, that’s good.”

  I called Micah aside as he came off. I told him what happened.

  I said, “What was Fonzie?”

  He said, “Cool.”

  I said, “Right. And that’s how I want you to be about this.”

  The hockey played in the second session was crisper and faster. There were twenty-eight kids, not including goalies. They were divided into two teams, then they scrimmaged. Each shift was one minute, the blink of an eye when you’re trying to distinguish yourself. It was easy to identify the standouts—several of them would become Micah’s teammates: Tommy McDermott and his stepbrother Joey; “Broadway Jenny” Hendrix and “Broadway Julie” Sherman; Barry Meese, the kid with the very old dad; Becky Goodman; Leo Moriarty; and Coach Rizzo’s son Brian.

  Of course, there were other kids, a handful clearly marked for Double or Triple A—kids so fast and far ahead they seemed untouchable. When two of them went up the ice together, passing the puck back and forth, closing in on the goalie, your heart went into your mouth and you were happy to be there. A friend once told me why basketball fans groan when a half-court shot taken by the other team rims out. “Because you appreciate greatness, even when it hurts.”

  Micah was stronger in the second session than he’d been in the first—the better the players, the better you play. It’s why holding kids back until they are big makes no sense. You never want to be the best kid, or the worst. Dead middle is where the growth is. We went home after and waited. The system seems like it’s been designed to create anxiety. Two hundred kids. Seventy spots. The Double As are notified first. It’s like a fraternity bid, a tap from Skull and Bones. “We’d like to invite your child to join the Double A Ridgefield Bears.” Top players get the initial calls. If they decline, another kid is moved up the depth chart. It takes two or three days to fill the entire Double A roster.

  Meanwhile, gossip spreads like a prairie fire. You get an update after each offer has been made. You get the news even if you don’t want it. Another mom, another Facebook post: fireworks and champagne bottles. You do the math. The longer you wait, the slimmer the odds. No chance now—it’s been thirty-two hours! My expectations adjusted. I was like Rocky, hoping to merely go the distance with Creed. “Nobody’s ever gone the distance with Creed.” I had no thought of Micah making Double A. It was a miracle he was even in the running for Single A. I’d been sure he’d make it when we left the rink but became less certain as the hours turned into days. Had Micah been pulled up merely because Niels begged out and they needed an extra body? How cruel! The call came in the middle of the following week. Micah had made Pee Wee A.

  I tried to gloat, but Micah would not let me. He said, “Dad, cut it out.” And I did, but he could not stop me from jumping up and down inside. Micah making the team the way he did seemed like a parable, his hockey career in miniature. He’d been judged unfairly and sent down, but persisted, playing himself into the top group, slipping beneath the wire on the last minute of the last day. It was like Rocky. There was a training sequence, then a showdown. There was a brutalized but victorious fighter calling for his woman, not his wife but his mother, Jessica. (“Yo, Jessica!”) And there was me, the cornerman, grizzled old Mickey, on him because I knew what he was capable of. The music should have come up when I got that call, the credits should have rolled, but that’s not how life works. It continues instead, triumph giving way to another struggle, more anxiety, more joy.

  * * *

  Hockey is the best sport for kids and parents. Compare it with the others in the marketplace. Start with America’s most popular, tackle football. What’s wrong with football? How about everything? For one, there is the plethora of positions. It’s all specialization, with some kids seeming to matter more than others. For a tackle or guard, the game is not the one you imagine—the pigskin spiraling gracefully through the autumn sky. It’s a
shoving contest. What does football teach such a kid about life? Devotees think it’s teamwork they learn, cooperation and sacrifice. Bullshit! They learn the class system. There are the aristocrats—quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, all those who handle the ball—then everyone else, the working masses tasked with protecting the aristocrats. A kid can spend the entire day on the field without touching the ball, and forget about scoring. Then there’s the long-term effect of all those collisions, what a few hundred low-impact blows can do to a developing brain. Barack Obama said that if he had a son, he wouldn’t let him play. Ditto Terry Bradshaw and Mike Ditka. And look, here comes another Hall of Famer asking if you can help him find his own house! It explains the recent exodus from the game. Many parents who played high school football have pushed their kids into lacrosse and hockey instead. They grew up in another time, in another nation, where football was king. But things change. I recently flew into O’Hare airport. The suburban towns, once dotted with gridirons, were nothing but soccer fields. Driving to Ridgefield’s Winter Garden on a fall afternoon, I passed a park where eight- and nine-year-olds were playing tackle football in full gear. If I were a different sort of person, I’d go out there and scream, “Don’t any of you people read the newspaper?”

  What about basketball, the ranks of which have also been swelled by the dangers of football? It does skirt many of football’s problems—contact is incidental, every position is of equal importance, any player can score. But basketball fails in another way. It values height above almost any other quality. A short person, even normal-size, can excel in basketball, but must be wildly gifted to do so, one in a thousand. Height has never been of paramount importance in hockey; with the increasing importance of skating skill, it matters less than ever. Hockey is a refuge for sports parents of moderate stature, like myself. I am five-foot-ten in boots and expect a full-grown Micah to be about the same. The NBA’s top 2019 draft pick (Zion Williamson) is six-foot-six, 285 pounds. In the NHL, it was Jack Hughes—five-foot-eleven, 170 pounds.