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Lampman Minor Sports responds to negative letter on minor hockey

The Editor: Last week your paper published a letter that made strong accusations about our community and our minor hockey coaches. Lampman Minor Sports is a board made up of seven people.

The Editor: 

Last week your paper published a letter that made strong accusations about our community and our minor hockey coaches. 

Lampman Minor Sports is a board made up of seven people. We are involved in the decision of who is allowed to coach minor hockey and what age group the coach is best suited for. 

We strongly support our 18 coaches, players, managers, referees and all the other volunteers who help keep hockey alive in Lampman. 

We have a zero tolerance against bullying of any kind. Zero from coaches, zero from parents to coaches and managers, zero from player to player and zero against officials. 

Over the hockey season Lampman Minor Sports will deal with issues that may affect one of our teams. We then organize a meeting with the parties involved: coaches, parents and players. Guess how many times it was about a player getting bullied? 

Zero. 

Guess how many email/texts or phone calls that Lampman Minor Sports received about a player being bullied? 

Zero. 

We take this very seriously and those are the facts. We are very disappointed when bullying rumours are spread about our coaches. 

Ice time is a hot topic in every rink in the province. Stopwatches have been used in the stands from novice to midget, from house hockey to AAA. It is usually the biggest issue with the 32 coaches in the stands, not the 16 kids in the dressing room. 

In Lampman, we encourage each team to have a parent meeting at the start of the year and discuss the goals for the team.This gives the coach guidelines on how to coach the team. Will this team enter provincials? Will this team run four lines? Will this team have a power play? Will everyone play the same in the third period as the first period when the game is tied? Is it different when the score is 10 – 1? Will this team alternate goalies or go with the hot one? When players and parents sign up, hopefully there are more valuable life lessons included with the fees than how many minutes per game. Being a hardworker, respectful, good teammate, always on time, are great attributes that would look good on any resume. 

When our coaches and managers attend scheduling meetings with neighbouring towns, the issues affecting minor sports are exactly the same. Each town has fewer coaches, fewer managers, fewer volunteers and fewer officials. Why is this? 

We think the reason is because of the negative comments the volunteers may face on a daily basis. They have volunteered hours and hours of their time and did their best, but 99 per cent of the feedback they will hear is negative. 

We need to change this mindset and focus on positives. 

We would like to encourage the community of Lampman and other towns to share their own positive stories about their coaches and volunteers (past and present). Send them a text, share a picture or a story on Facebook, buy them lunch. We need to keep all of our coaches, plus recruit new ones for the future. 

Sincerely,

Kirk Johnson, Louise Carson, Ryan Farnsworth, Shelly Erdelyan, Brenda Jensen, Lorna Roy, Dayman Seeman

On behalf of Lampman Minor Sports