"ilya and shane as hockey parents judging coaches and being involved, etc. etc" yes i hear you and i love you. But walk with me. hold my hand.
shane and ilya being super involved hockey parents. they're and games and practices and they love that their kid loves hockey the way they do, sharing a love for something is so wonderful and can be foundational to interpersonal relationships. obviously their most important shared love is each other but like, hockey is just such a cherry on top. they're so involved, so into it. maybe.... a little too into it.
they're not yuna level, not at all, but they've got opinions and they aren't really afraid to share them. they have a good relationship with the coach, a younger twenty something who they guess does this is in her spare time to be an active member of the community, you want a village be the village type deal. they like her and she knows hockey but she doesn't know hockey like they do.
and their daughters team sort of sucks and they rarely win and it sort of bothers them both? because they see hockey, they see how if she switched up lines or played to specifics of a few players then they could be really good! they mention these things to her often and she always takes it in stride but never really make any changes.
and they approach her about this and they're very tactful about how they say it because they'd never be this rude to someone but they've got Professional Sports horse blinders on and the jist of it is that she's a good coach and all but she just doesn't seem to understand the competition. that it should be competitive because that's the core of it and while she gets athletics and all she doesn't get competition.
and she doesn't even take it poorly she just kind of sighs and turns to both of them like they're well meaning children and is like. thank you so much for your input. what you don't understand is that this isn't a skills training program, or a minor league team or a major league team or even a team in an intense league of any kind! this is a hockey team of thirteen year old girls and i am not teaching them to play hockey, i'm teaching them how to be people. i'm teaching them to work together and love one another and im giving them a safe space in what is biologically the worst time of their life. I am not training professionals. I am teaching kids to be kind to others and most importantly to themselves. so no, i do not need input on line changes.
and they're both a little... shell shocked? like they love hockey, but it was always fun because it was a competition for them, not because it was.... a collaborative deal? like obvious, hockey is a team sport, love the team, team important, team work together. but they were both so far ahead of most of their teams that their coaches would highlight them, tell them to play to their strengths, just like they would for other players and their strengths. the team was there to support whoever was in possession. but they watch their daughters team with new eyes. and yeah, they suck a little. obviously they do, they're THIRTEEN. but they're watching and holy shit. yeah, maybe they don't have all the skill. can't shoot as hard, they can't enforce a play in the same way training might teach. but there's a different, almost more impressive thing happening. they realize they're not watching a bunch of people kind of suck at hockey, they're watching one person kind of suck at hockey. they're watching some sort of preteen hive mind on ice. their communication is seamless, they can feel where their teammates are without seeing them, they're trust in each other is so complete that it doesn't matter that the pass wasn't hard enough or accurate enough to be completed, what did matter was if the pass HAD connected, every teammate was exactly in the spot to take it. their defense barely ever leaves their zone, there's no attempts at a dman goal. no, they don't leave their goalies side for ANYTHING. they don't give a rats ass about the puck because to them, their job is to protect their GOALIE, not their goal. and it makes for terrible, terrible hockey. but they're playing shit hockey as a real, true, team.
also, they later send a fruit basket as an apology to the coach for their whole "athletics vs competitive athletics" remark, which she thinks is fucking HILARIOUS. She pointedly does not tell them she's considered one of the greatest competitive freestyle skiers to have ever lived. they find that out when someone puts on the x games in the kingfisher when they're visiting and they're like. what the fuck is that coach reese? they send her a second fruit basket.
they later ask why the hell she's coaching hockey for fun and she explains that, when she was a teenager, she had a coach who refused to coach single skiers. he formed a team and they'd all practice together and he'd help each of them individually but also they learned to rely on each other. and it was so, so important to her. and suddenly the most important thing in her individually competitive sport was her team. she wanted to give that to her girls. she says she wishes she could have given that to them. that it must have been lonely, being singled out as the best.
BOTH of their therapists know her ass by full government name after that one.
