Hal Tearse has been a hockey coach for more than fifty years.

 

A self-proclaimed “dual walk-on D1 player who never played,” he’s been on an endless quest to do a better job as a coach since his college playing days ended in injury. From youth and high school hockey to the NAHL, the USHL, and NCAA, Hal also coached Team USA, evaluated players for the US Olympic teams in the soon to be legendary early 1980s, and served on the boards of USA Hockey and Minnesota Hockey. Now back coaching both boys and girls teams at the youth hockey level, his credentials in the sport are second to none. 

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We recently caught up with Coach Tearse to talk about the evolution of coaching, and about the value of communication to both players and parents.

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You’ve coached at all levels of hockey over a long period of time. What’s your coaching philosophy?    I'm trying to make a difference in the lives of young people. A positive difference. My definition of success is that we are—individually and collectively—noticeably improved by the end of the season, and my goal is that ten years after the kids graduate from my team, they think back about that as the best experience they'd had in their hockey life so far. So I guess my philosophy is transformational coaching versus transactional coaching. 

 

How do you do that? It boils down to having a relationship with every player. You coach the team, but you have to coach the individual players, and you’ve got to figure out what it is that they want out of the experience, and what makes them tick. You've got to spend the time and energy to build relationships with the players so that you know them as people, not just as numbers.

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What’s your sense of the mindset of young hockey players?     In all the work I've done over the years, I’ve come to believe that most kids play with fear. They're afraid of being yelled at. They're going to get yelled at by the coaches, they're going to get yelled at by their dad or their mom on the way home. So as coaches we have to give the kids permission to learn. And if we really want to do a great job, we need to spend twice as much time at this as we’re doing right now. This is not “come to practice for an hour and go home.” You’ve got to spend time with the kids. Most coaches are parents, so they know their own kid, but they don't really know the other kids. It's about relationships.

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Why does individualized feedback matter when you’re coaching a team sport?     It matters a lot. In a typical team, you've got kids in their first year at that level. And those kids are terrified. They'll never admit it, but they're terrified. It takes them anywhere from 30 to 130 days to process the game at a faster speed, and to learn how to navigate the physical play at that level. I want to support them in that transition, so I can't talk to them the same way I might talk to what I would call a veteran or more experienced player. Being able to communicate with every player on their terms is critical to earning trust and their respect. You need to tailor your message to every player specifically.

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What do you think better connections between coaches, players, and parents can do for youth sports?    First, I think parents are critical to the process today. Thirty years ago they didn't really care. I mean, my parents never saw me play high school hockey, they never saw me coach hockey. Well, my mother did come out to Colorado to watch me play when she was on her way to California, but I got knocked out in that game!

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But now the parents are integral. They’re so much a part of it. Many years ago, I realized that there were only two or three of us coaches, and there were twenty or twenty-five players. We only spent an hour or an hour and a half a day with them, but their parents spent a lot of time with them, so I always made sure to tell the parents what we were doing and why we were doing it. And now, with PowerPlayer, I can officially appoint them as assistant off-ice coaches!

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What kinds of things are you doing to inform and engage parents? And what’s the result?   Back before the internet, Investor’s Business Daily would publish this sort of “Ten Things for Success” list or something, and they used a lot of sports metaphors. Well, I’d cut those articles out and I'd write some things on them, and then I’d copy them and actually mail them to my players via the US Post Office. 

 

PowerPlayer allows me, my assistant coaches, and my team manager to communicate to the group at large, but it also gives us coaches the ability to communicate individually, or to just the defenseman or just the forwards. So now I can send that stuff, and video, and polls, and practice plans using PowerPlayer, and better still, the parents have the ability to see it all. 

 

There’s no doubt in my mind that enlisting the parents' support and informing them of your approach to teaching their son or daughter to be a better hockey player makes coaching way more impactful, and way easier.

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