Do you know who Tony Robbins is?   He is a motivational speaker.   He gets paid millions of dollars to tell people that they can do it, basically he builds personal confidence.  You will come to realize that most people in the world are what I would call sheep.  They are followers who have no opinions of their own, worry about what others think about them, and have no self-motivation to pursue their goals.  There will always be someone smarter or stronger than you are, but unless you are in competition with that person, it does not matter.  However, you happen to be in competition with many of these people as a hockey player.  The two things you need to do in order to be successful are, work hard to improve your weaknesses and skills and learn to work with your teammates as a whole.

Whether you realize it or not you learn something new every day.  Some of you may have to experience something several times before you absorb it, but you will eventually learn.  You all have different skills and abilities.  Your first battle is realizing not only what your skills are but what your weaknesses are as well.  You must then focus on developing your weaknesses.  This takes self-motivation.

Success is simply about achieving your own personal goals and not the goals of others.  You may want to be rich, go to college, play professional hockey, or maybe a combination of many things, as long as it is your goal, by achieving it, you will be a success.  The thing you have to realize is that you cannot achieve your goals on your own.  This does not mean that you become one of the followers, it means you use your experiences along with the experiences of others to gain knowledge.  Parents, teachers, and coaches are not the only people you gain knowledge from. Knowledge comes from the experience of everyone who has ever lived on this planet. Personal opinions do not reflect knowledge unless backed by fact.  This simply means, that if I tell you a hockey puck has a cream filling, your common sense will tell me that I am wrong but I will not be proven wrong unless the puck is cut in half.

Now one thing that I can tell you for sure is that I do not enjoy coaching for one simple reason.  As a former player and current instructor I have seen and experienced just about everything I possible can, and it is difficult to teach many of these things since I, myself learned them through experience.  Now I know I am not the best coach around, and I do not claim to be, however, I do know that I am the best hockey instructor around.  I know this because I have factually 100% proven all my teaching techniques and use facts and physics to support my teachings.  The job of a coach, however, has grown from that of a teacher, to a combination of many things.  This is thanks in part to many of these sheep or followers that are involved in youth hockey today. Although many coaches are motivators and believe that by yelling at their players they will motivate them, I do not believe in that philosophy.  The reason I do not believe in this is simple, if you do not have the desire to motivate yourself for a ‘game’ that is supposed to be fun, what motivation are you going to have to succeed in life.  You could always hire a personal motivation coach to follow you around 24hrs a day, but then again, where would you get the money to afford him.  You could also live on the three essentials, eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom, they have a name for that too, Animals.  The main difference between humans and animals is that we have goals and aspirations and the ability to obtain them.

Now I could take each of you for a week and work with you on developing your skills and improving your weaknesses and your game will most definitely improve.  However, skill is only part of the game. It also takes knowledge, hard work, and teamwork.  Those players who have the ability to think and react to a situation more quickly are much more effective than someone with skill is. It takes three things to become a complete hockey player.  The first is intelligence.  An individual who is constantly learning through experiences he faces will always be successful. Second are skills.  Now most people have some natural ability, but unless your skills are constantly being refined, you will fall behind.  Finally, and most important, is self-motivation.  If you have to be told to work hard every shift or during every practice, then why are you even playing a sport that is so competitive.

Everyone has a skill that is stronger than your other abilities.  That means your weaknesses must continuously be practiced so as to make yourself better as a whole.  I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “The whole is only as good as the sum of its’ parts.”  This phrase means that, although you are a “TEAM’, each individual must be the best that he can be in order to make group better as a whole, and this is why the other phrase, “The chain is only as strong as its’ weakest link”, fits so well.  Now unless each individual is willing to motivate themselves, the team as a whole will never improve.

Finally, I would like to make it clear that I am your coach.  I am not here to make friends; I have enough of them already. My job is simply to teach you and make you a better player.  You must realize that you have been selected to play at a level higher than many of the kids your age are playing.  This should motivate you even more to better yourself and improve your game on and off the ice.  Now seeing that I am willing to sacrifice my personal time and health to help you improve, I am counting on each and every one of you to show me your best effort every day.  I do have the ability as coach to play whom ever I want in the games for as long as I want, and those will be the players who are willing to give everything they have every shift.  You also must be willing to make occasional mistakes, but you must also learn from those mistakes.  Remember, my door is always open and I am just a phone call away if you have any questions, and I am also always available for private lessons for those of you who really have the desire to improve your game.

Work Hard,

Coach Phillips

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