By Melissa Walsh

​If it weren’t for religion, chasing a puck around on skates would be meaningless. Anyone deeply involved with the spirited tradition of hockey is familiar with the sport’s rituals, mystics and gods.

Hockey certainly stretches your faith. It is a belief system that transcends rules and tactics, driving meaning and purpose into a player’s dedicated vision and a fan’s hopeful zeal. And in hockey’s victories and disappointments, joy and frustration, we — hockey’s matriarchs — choose always to keep the faith in religious hockey.

Like saints, memorable hockey players are known for courageous passion and humility. Outsiders don’t know this; they think hockey is a bully’s game. For the hockey player, greatness is a purpose, a mission from God — whom hockey folks refer to with the euphemism “the hockey gods.” Like mysticism, hockey sense can’t be taught, only honed with the help of wise coaching. And the lore and culture of the hockey life are reinforced by hockey moms.

Hockey moms who know that 80 percent of the game is the mental part nurture hockey toughness in the home. Hockey toughness is nurtured by hockey moms in Canada, where the mystique of hockey’s past and future are strongly interwoven into its present and whose national history includes remarkable hockey moments, such as Henderson’s goal to seal the national team’s victory against the Soviets in the 1972 Summit Series. Hockey toughness is nurtured by American hockey moms old enough to remember how the hockey game presented a miracle for the United States in 1980 — a blessing that wouldn’t have been realized without the fierce physical training and mental strength of Herb Brooks’ players.

Sure, religious hockey forces upon us hockey moms a certain fanaticism. We undertake the religious-hockey instruction of our home. We wear a hockey mom pin close to our heart next to a cross. We teach the kids about the stories of great players, how they controlled the puck for a purpose greater than themselves — for the team and for the fans. We tell them that hockey players don’t act selfishly, don’t disrespect authority and don’t tattle. We adorn the kids’ bedrooms with images of Mr. Hockey, The Rocket, The Great One, The Next One and Mario the Magnificent. We dress them in the jersey’s of hockey’s finest armies and take them on their first pilgrimage to Toronto. We allow them to grow hockey hair. We cooperate with the dervish behavior of our goalies, honoring pre-game rituals and superstitions. We buy the little ones tape in their lucky color and work with team managers to get them their lucky jersey number.

I like hockey because if you’re patient and loyal in fighting the good fight, you’ll eventually taste victory. Every hockey insider knows that. And though the hockey gods have been attributed with great disappointments, such as imposing a 54-year-long curse on the powerful city of New York, they’re not despised by the game’s great players and coaches. Rather, “the hockey gods,” or the purity in the momentum of the game, are respected. Mike Babcock said, “The hockey gods are fair. If you don’t play hard, you don’t win.” Occupying hockey’s core then is a faith in a divine justice. It pumps meaning into the tenacious backcheck, the relentless forecheck and the confident attack on net. And for goalies, the hockey game can give them the power to stop time.

So to the end of rearing my kids into sainthood, I raise them as hockey players, because in hockey there are no shortcuts. It’s just like life.

For its promotion of strong values, development of character and offering of lessons for the trials of real life, I believe in hockey.

​© 2011 Melissa Walsh

By Melissa Walsh

Herb Brooks-isms are popular in my home. Five of us play hockey, and we’ve all seen Miracle more than a dozen times. Though viewing the game as a seventh-grader in 1980 is still a vivid memory for me, the lesson of the miracle game as applied by my four hockey-playing sons has had a deeper impact on my can-do spirit. The mental strength modeled by my goalie is the most remarkable.

I tell my boys, “There’s good-crazy and bad-crazy.” I believe living out a passion to mind the net falls under “good-crazy.” A true goalie amazes onlookers with his puck-blocking talent and his deflection of criticism when he can’t block them all. As a goalie develops, he trains his mind to counter the literal shots of the puck and the figurative shots of severe judgment. He grows his heart, quickness, and thick skin for his mission, focusing on one thing: making the next great save. And when he’s made a great save, he feels that he’s stopped time.

Great moments, like stopping time, are born from this opportunity of accepting the risk of playing net. When a goalie’s hot, wow, it’s magical – great split-second moments of staying big to stone the break-out shooter, or reading the attacker like a clairvoyant to foil the deke, or making a swift swoop of the glove to catch the snipe.
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I don’t have the special, good-crazy gift to play net, but I have the passion to step out and use my head, heart and hands to raise four sons and build a business. I hear these words: “You were born for this. This is your time. Go out there and take it.” I’m seizing each great opportunity with the belief in great moments

​© 2011 Melissa Walsh

By Melissa Walsh

​In a letter to W. T. Barry in 1822, James Madison wrote, "A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Demand Fact-Based Content; Reject Sensationalism as 'News'

Every new grad of journalism has a fundamental career decision to make. Sell sensationalism. Or aim for truth-telling. Call me “old-fashioned,” but I find the “the new journalism” of leading 1A stories with opinion, speculation, or rumor quite disturbing. Save it for the op-ed page or a blog entry.

Readers are also accountable; the journalist’s commitment to truth-telling cannot sustain a democracy if the readership discontinues a demand for truth. For our American democracy to thrive, media consumers must make the effort to discern fact-based information from sensational speculation. They must actively support media outlets and independent journalists who value truth-telling over money and attention.

Filtering the good information from the clutter of unverified statements is difficult. It requires looking deeper than the morning local paper and evening network news, where headline stories may have been rapidly spun from content spoon-fed by press secretaries and decision-makers who are so high up the food chain that they have little to no sense of how those at the grassroots are subsisting. Becoming a critical thinker and good news reader requires becoming a student of history, an independent researcher, a fact- checker, and an informed and listening observer.

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis opines that newspapers alone offer little value for acquiring knowledge. "Even in peacetime," Lewis writes, "I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be seen before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand."

When I’m on a quest for knowledge about a topic, I don’t accept as real or complete news that passes as “news” alone. Complex events are presented in a news story too quickly and too simply to teach us anything of substance. I know from living abroad where news was happening before my eyes that a newspaper reporter’s black and white rendering too often excludes the critical gray tones and colors of the truth. Therefore, to get the whole story, I invest my dollars and time in news supplements and alternatives:

Study history. 
Just as I might gain insight into Italian from studying Latin, I learn about today’s events from reading history. For, example, I know from studying history that there is a historical pattern of economic instability leading to political instability. Any history buff knows that poverty leads to unrest, that the want for bread generates a hunger for freedom. And look what we see in the headlines today: rebellion triggered by damaged economies and rebels looking for a scapegoat.

Read the wires. 
Reading the wires regularly, I was able to connect the recent ousting of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to the demonstrations in Egypt. Wire services, such as AP and Reuters, function as boots-on-the-ground news services that consumers desperately need to sift through the muck of ratings-driven reporting and to find some essential pieces of information and insight that the mainstream talking heads have left out.

Check the facts. 
For issues that I have a special interest in understanding clearly and completely, I regularly consult primary source material to verify statements made on the networks and in the press. For example, I referred to the DoD’s Comptroller for the complete details of the proposed 2012 defense budget while reading news surrounding conflicts regarding the federal budget. I also check the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s website frequently. My concern for our service men and women serving in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) prompts me to review at least weekly the list of casualties. I also scan the DoD press releases.

Support Fair, Reasonable Critical Thinkers; Dismiss Hype-Mongering Pundits. 
As freedom-lovers, we must equip ourselves with knowledge to make our leaders and our press accountable. Passively listening to a tirade on Fox or MSNBC does not qualify as gaining knowledge. Just a little fact-checking, and you’ll find the cracks in the claims of these prime-time windbags who make a heck of a lot of money for their networks. A sign that our nation has become intellectually healthy would be the networks finally booting these guys from the airwaves due to low ratings. When consumers do their homework, interest in anti-intellectual, attention-seeking pundits withers. Pundits like these, whether on the right or the left of the political spectrum, are what I call “Hype Mongers.” And I would love to see the American public tune them right out of business.

In the embedded table, I contract the Truth Seeker (journalist) with the Hype-Monger (Pundit):

Challenge Policy Makers; Renounce Empty Partisan Rhetoric.
Political leaders can be just as ugly and deceitful as hype mongers. Policy makers can severely damage businesses as they make decisions impacting industries for which they are not subject- matter experts, when they gain campaign support for votes. Surely, lobbyists drive policy-makers’ decisions just as ratings drive the headlines in the mainstream network teasers. Also, when policy makers legislate by presumptuously putting people in boxes and labeling them with sweeping generalizations, the lives of many individuals are affected. When defense contractors and commanders looking to put a feather in their cap push for war tactics based on new technology rather than the real needs of the servicemen in the fight, thousands of lives and billions of tax dollars are lost.

In his essay “Congressional Oversight Willing and Able or Willing to Enable?”1 Winslow T. Wheeler described congressional oversight on executive branch national security decisions this way: "Mere words, in the form of prognostications at congressional hearings may catch the momentary eye–and the evening news–but their impact on policy, and history, vary from transitory to nonexistent. Beyond that, poorly informed questions, prosecuted ineffectually at a congressional hearing do little more than help us identify which politicians are the lightweights." As constituents, we must challenge our senators and representatives to do their homework and truly become the check and balance they were prescribed to be in the U.S. Constitution. If an informed citizenry held policy makers accountable, then we would have ourselves one fine democracy.

We Get the Democracy We Deserve.

George Bernard Shaw said, “Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” Gaining knowledge is hard work, and it is our duty as citizens. Seeking truth isn’t a warm and fuzzy challenge; it forces one to look at evil in the world, to witness suffering, to come to terms with betrayal by those entrusted to lead. But knowledge can equip and inspire citizens to act. It will lead to a higher quality of democracy.

In this dynamic media age, I hope that media managers are considering new ways for supporting a readership’s truth quest, such as enhancing reports with historical notes, facts and figures, and statements from relevant, diverse, and grounded viewpoints.

Instead of following the money, news must follow the truth. This way, the people might prevent legislation from following the money and ensure it protects people. News consumers would stop passively accepting the arguments of the Republican or Democrat dynasties and their ruling heirs, and instead demand transparency, accountability, and truth-telling.

“Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think,” wrote American patriot Thomas Paine. “But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.”2

Let truth be the magnet that attracts and energizes our American democracy. Let the hype fade.

1 The Political Labyrinth, February 2011.
2 Rights of Man, 1792

​© 2011 Melissa Walsh

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By Melissa Walsh

​“Mini-mites, it’s as good as it gets,” said a veteran hockey dad to a mini- mites dad. Overhearing this, I couldn’t help but to nod in agreement. This was about two years ago. I was seated in rink bleachers enjoying five- and six-year olds playing a cross-ice scrimmage. My youngest son was among them.

There’s nothing cuter. Fearlessly, these tiny skaters chase the puck like little terriers after a ball. Bunched up in a pack, they manage to gain control of the puck, then take it to the net — hustling, falling down, getting up again, and sometimes even passing. The coaches look on smiling. No systems. All instinct. No swearing or fighting, and usually no penalties. The mini-mite experience is innocent fun and a pure love for playing a game. For organized, indoor hockey, it’s the closest thing to the freedom of kids playing on the pond.

And mini-mite parenting is so simple. You get them dressed in the gear, find a spot in the bleachers, sit back, and smile. That’s all you have to do to nurture a mini mite’s love for the game.

At a local hockey camp one summer, I heard a pee wee ask Florida Panther David Booth what the most important thing is for making it in the NHL. Booth said, “Never lose your love for the game.” I think about Booth’s comment as I watch the little mini mites play. For them, hockey is just another game, and the love for it is just taking root.

Unfortunately, however, I occasionally observe a mini-mite parent uprooting a child’s love for hockey. Whether they’re scolding their little one for making a “mistake” on the ice or for just not “trying hard enough,” I think to myself, “That poor kid doesn’t have a chance. He’s going to lose his love for the game before mites.”

While hockey players of yesterday developed instincts and a love for the game on the pond, today’s youngsters are expected to develop this passion in a structured, adult-controlled environment. If we’re not careful, we’ll over-manage potential hockey players into stressed out kids who play hockey.

Trenton Youth Hockey’s Frank Murphy, a nationally recognized pioneer of instructional hockey for little kids, insists that hockey skills must be developed in a “fun-filled environment.” In a USA Hockey Magazine profile in 2004, Murphy said that to be a more effective hockey teacher, he had to learn how to get into the heads of mini-mites. They have short attention spans, they process what you say literally, and between drills they like to talk to the coach about kid stuff, like birthday parties and cartoons. I concluded from the article that Murphy’s great success at Trenton was grounded in treating five and six years olds like they’re five and six. This requires patience, kindness, and acting a little zany as needed to keep their attention.
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Mini-mites is a non-competitive level, designed for FUNdamental development in learning and loving the game of hockey. If you have a mini-mite, I recommend letting him pack his favorite stuffed animal in his hockey bag. Let him brag to team mates about losing his first tooth. Let him act a little silly with his little buddies at the rink. Smile a lot. Cheer them along. Never scream at a mini-mite (or at a mini-mite coach or ref), even from behind the glass. And don’t discuss your mini-mite’s performance during the car ride home. To assess your mini-mite’s development, my advise is simply to ask him, “Are you having fun playing hockey?”

​© 2011 Melissa Walsh

By Melissa Walsh

​“He shoots. He scores!” The words of Foster Hewitt echo in the hockey mom’s mind while rising to cheer solid effort at a youth hockey game. She cheers for all the kids — though naturally, it is her hockey kid who will forever be her heart’s superstar.

He is her star because he is a “good” player, listening to the coach, heeding the authority of the ref, working hard to move the puck up the ice, maneuvering past and battling opponents. He rises early for practice without complaint. He religiously practices drills on lake ice or the driveway. When faced with aggressive play, excessive or within the rules, Mom’s player continues thinking through his game, envisioning his team’s next goal. The screaming from behind the glass is white noise. His focus is his game, honing instincts of head, heart, and hands.

And Mom’s job has been tough. She’s endured obnoxious parents and cringed as her child gets hit hard against the boards. She can spot disappointment on her player’s face from the bleachers, through the cage a hundred feet away, after fanning on a one-timer attempt or making a costly mistake on the back check.

Mom asks her player after a frustrating game or on the way to a 7 a.m. practice, “Are you having fun?”

“Yeah,” the player replies. “Great,” Mom says.

Mom signs the check for the next ice bill knowing that her player’s hockey development is owned by him, not by her. He defines his hockey dreams and craves the excitement of the hockey life. She is proud of her player, because she understands that, by accepting this challenge, her child volunteered for a lesson that will support his development into adulthood — the lesson of puck control. Her player is learning how to rise after getting knocked down. He’s learning essential skills for carrying a responsibility to net. He’s developing instincts for jumping over and maneuvering around obstacles, maturing in self-discipline and self-control. Mom’s player practices techniques for dangling and protecting the puck, creating zone and the chance, looking for a teammate to feed a pass to or taking the shot himself.

She is confident that he will enter into the game of life as an assertive and disciplined adult. The character he cultivated during the hockey experience will empower him for serving in a job, heading up a family, or volunteering for his community or nation. Throughout his life, Mom’s player will start out each new morning with the words of Bob Johnson in mind — “It’s a great day for hockey!”

​© 2010 Melissa Walsh