Who played worse?

Me or you?

Why are girls hockey players even asking themselves this question?
Last night I heard a story from a girls hockey parent that was both shocking and familiar. After a recent rash of tough losses, the team came into the dressing and started to have a competition about who played the worst.

I was taken by surprise at first, but then when I really thought about it, I realized that I have seen this with girls hockey teams many times before and that I was guilty of the same thing back when I was a young player.

After losing a tough game, most girls will lay the blame squarely on themselves. While this is better than taking no responsibility for the loss and blaming your teammates/coach/ref, it does absolutely nothing to increase your confidence or help the team.

You may have played a bad game. You may have had your worst game ever. But why would you want to get in a fight over who was the worst?

Why would you want to “be the best” at “being the worst”?

Sometimes it is a case of “fishing for compliments”. You may have played a decent game (or even a great game), but you start talking about how badly you played so that your teammates/parents/coaches will tell you how well you played. While this may boost your confidence, telling yourself and others that you played badly (even when you didn’t) has major negative effects. If you keep telling yourself and others that you played horribly, you are eventually going to start believing it.

But in the majority of cases, the game of “who played worse” usually starts with one player and causes a domino effect.

One player comes in to the room, says she played horribly, and then the rest of the players follow along. It is an interesting and destructive phenomenon, especially when it is one of the stronger players on the team who starts it all off. Think about it – if one of the best players on your team comes into the room after the game and talks about how badly she played, how do you think the weaker players on the team are going to react? A lot of the time, the weaker players will say to themselves, “If she (the strong player) played badly, how bad that does that make me?”

You may have played your worst game ever, but you get ZERO benefit from dwelling on it.

I remember the worst game I ever played like it was yesterday, but that doesn’t mean that I think about it every time I head out on the ice. Even though I played absolutely horribly that game, it doesn’t do me or my teammates any good to relive it again and again. There are going to be times when you lose. And there will be times when you lose badly.

Instead of competing with each other over who was the worst, talk about what went right.

One strategy I like to use is having a “buddy” for every game. The players are paired up before the game and they have to pick one thing that their “buddy” does during the game that is really great. Even when you have a really bad game, I guarantee you did something right out there. Instead of fighting, help your teammates out and focus on the positives. It is a really hard thing to do when you lose a tough game or are in a slump, but it’s what you need to do to turn your performance around.

Have you ever found yourself playing the “who’s worse” game? If so, how did you turn it around?

Work Hard & Dream Big.

~ Coach Kim