LOVE. It’s really all about love. I first noticed the concept of love articulated as it pertains to a sports team from legendary “tough-man” football coach Vince Lombardi. Coach Lombardi spent his collegiate years at Fordham University. Fordham is a Jesuit college. Love is the cornerstone of Jesuit teachings.

Lombardi often talked about love. If one truly loves something, like themselves or their team, they will nurture it, they will sacrifice for it, so that individually and collectively, all may become their very best. Love your teammates, truly love them and they you, and the team has a chance to be successful. Without love, the required level of sacrifice and commitment will never be made.

Accountability is an underrated component of love. To hold yourself and those around you accountable, is love. Show me a good marriage (small team), and I will show you accountability, sacrifice and nurturing. That said, this is where so many fail. They don’t hold themselves accountable and are too often unwilling to hold others accountable. Appeasement is the easy way out. 

This is where coaches/parents/spouses often go wrong – too often a lack of will to compel accountability for those around them. Our society is doing the same. When we don’t hold each other accountable, we cannot grow to our potential individually or collectively. Holding others accountable doesn’t always make one the most popular. But it should.

The development of this love relationship including accountability requires a process. “The process” works for the growth of everything, of all things, be they individual, small teams or big teams. My good friend and former Navy SEAL Senior Chief Lou Nebel coined for us in hockey the following acronym for this process: ICE – Identify-Correct-Execute.

The identify part seems to give most players and most people the most trouble. It should be simple to identify the things that need improving or fixing. Often, however, it is anything but simple. Ego gets in the way. Dishonest or incorrect feedback gets in the way. Sometimes this incorrect feedback comes from the people who claim to love us the most. Love can blur some lines.

How do we identify? Coaches/friends/teachers give us feedback, tips and instruction. Coaches watch video with us. Honest teammates give us honest feedback. How many times do we ask our parents, teachers, coaches or spouses what WE can do to be better sons, daughters, wives, husbands, etc.? We have to SEEK improvement. It has to be on our radar every day and not just in hockey. Lombardi said, “Excellence is not a sometimes thing, it is an all the time thing.” Excellence is for each of us to pursue. It cannot be done for us.

One of the greatest ways to “identify” is self-reflection. It’s why I love some form of meditation in self-reflection. Was I a good teammate today? Was I a good daughter/son/spouse? What do “I” think I could do better? By the way, we have to turn our phone off for this! In the end, we all need to be our own best coach, and that means seeking honest assessment.

It has been said, love is not something you get, it is something you do. To care for yourself, to care for others requires loving attention. Loving and committed focus. This honest assessment also requires forgiveness. If we live in the past, wallowing in our various mistakes, we cannot move forward positively. The same is true if we are not forgiving others. Forgiveness is BIG if you want a relationship in love.

Loving yourself means being your own best coach. This will always be one of my first recommendations to any aspiring player. Often folks want to blame coaches for lack of attentiveness or skill in coaching. I say to them: “Figure out a different way to identify.” Watch your own video. Watch better players than yourself. Ask a teammate. Ask a friend, a spouse, someone, anyone who cares about you. Find ways to study. But make no excuses. You can’t control others, only yourself.

Win or lose, good day or bad day, stick to the process. During a game, you play a shift. You come off the ice, take a few seconds to download, identify with your linemates or D partner things you might have done better. Forget and forgive whatever mistakes made, but learn from the past, don’t live in the past (forgiveness). If necessary, devise a plan and focus for the next shift. Then move along, get your eyes back in the game, and focus, play/execute. Shift after shift.

At games end, the process remains the same – ICE. When you go home, the process is the same. At school, the process is the same. When you get married, the process is the same. In the end, it all wraps around love, the desire you have for each of the areas of your life, and for the people in your life – to grow into their greatest potential. To strive to be the best we can be is self-love. To strive for, to sacrifice for our team to be the best WE can be is love of team. To aspire to contribute to our community to help it be the best it can be is love of country. 

It’s all about love, and real love is healthy for all. Real love is held together by accountability which sometimes is called “tough love.” Real love takes real courage. In the end, the courage, sacrifice and attention to detail is all worth it, as you see relationships, teams and individuals grow to their fullest potential. We all love seeing that!

A MOST UNIQUE CAMP OPPORTUNITY
As I announced earlier, we are putting a unique camp together this spring (May). We have put together an outstanding team, the same team we had in Sioux Falls (USHL) where we helped nurture three times more future Division I college captains than any other organization in all of North America. This result I am most proud of, a career highlight for me and our team of coaches.

This team includes Kevin Ziegler (innovator and great coach in everything off ice), Navy SEAL Senior Chief Lou Nebel (the best I have seen in teaching great teamwork and the leadership that is required from all) and more outstanding coaches. 

We aspire to work with high school seniors who are about to enter junior hockey try-outs. We also aspire to work with select underclassmen, especially those who are on track to serve as captains for their respective high schools. We will not just give camp attendees on-ice instruction and the conditioning they need for junior hockey camps, but arm camp attendees with knowledge and superior knowledge of leadership skills. 

I want to APPEAL to the high school community to share this information. PLEASE consider sending your future captains to our camp.There will be leadership-focused training throughout camp. This includes off-ice, hands-on workshop conducted by our Navy SEAL friend, Lou Nebel. Senior Chief’s hands-on workshop alone is worth attending. I PROMISE TO ALL, we will send these young men back to your high school program better leaders and we hope they then infect your entire program with a better understanding of the leadership required to be successful, and not just in hockey, but in all facets of life. For more information on the camp which will start May 1, please email me at hartzellhockey@msn.com.
 

A St. Paul native and forward for the University of Minnesota from 1978-82, Kevin Hartzell coached in the USHL from 1983-89 with the St. Paul Vulcans and from 2005-12 with the Sioux Falls Stampede. He was the head coach of Lillehammer in Norway’s GET-Ligaen from 2012-14. His columns have appeared in Let’s Play Hockey since the late 1980s. His book “Leading From the Ice” is available at amazon.com.