Recent debates among presidential hopefuls have fueled a significant number of lunch room and water cooler discussions on politics around the country.  The conversations feature mainly a recap of he said, she said, who won and a few predictions on who may end up representing each party. Every once in a while though, you hear this…

“ Seriously, who in the world would want that job?”

Your first reaction may be to laugh as if it’s a joke, but take a second and think about it.  Being the U.S. President is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. Yet, people are often more critical of the person in that role than any other position.  The only jobs that might receive more criticism are coaches of professional sports teams, and that’s just because people would rather talk sports than politics. It may be the most thankless job in our country, or even the world.

In order to pursue and succeed at a thankless job like that, you have to truly take satisfaction from knowing you’re making a postive impact on the lives of others.

Nowhere is that more true than youth hockey. Despite the emergence of entreprenuers in youth sports, the majority of programs still rely primarily on volunteers, and few can match the passion and knowledge of the volunteers that serve the youth hockey associations in Minnesota.  

In honor of the time and energy these people put in, we wanted to highlight a few thankless jobs that are critical to the success of our community programs.

Before we get started, we ask you to keep a few things in mind.

1. This is far from an all inclusive list.
2. Every volunteer position plays a key role in the success of each team and association. 
3. These people love what they do and would do even more if they could. 

Ice Scheduler – This is the board member most families love to hate. Late night practices on school nights, early practices on weekends and too many days in a row are just a few common pet peeves of parents surrounding team schedules. When viewed on an individual basis, these frustrations are understandable.

However, the reality is most ice schedulers are as close to miracle workers as it gets in youth hockey. To get a sense of how many variables they have to manage, imagine having 10 kids that all have different activities and you have to plan how to get each of them to the right place at the right time. As frustrating as the schedule may seem to you, it’s actually fairly remarkable that the schedules come out as good as they do.

Registrar – On the surface, being a registrar may seem like an easy position. They probably just coordinate registration, right? Not quite.

In many ways, registrars are the glue that holds the association together.  They work silently behind the scenes making sure all of the fine details and requirements are taken care of. From managing the participation rule to checking the qualifications of coaches to ensuring each team is eligible for tournaments, registrars are relied on to cross all of the T’s and dot the I’s so everyone else can focus on helping kids get better and keeping the game fun.

Tournament Director - If there was any volunteer hockey position that could really benefit from being able to be in two places at once, it would likely be the Tournament Director.  Stop by the arena during a tournament and you are likely find organized chaos that gives the best station based practices a run for their money. 

Tournament directors, many of whom put in extensive hours leading up to tournament and spend entire weekends at the rink, are pulled in thousands of different directions and asked millions of questions. Yet, they find a way to use the kids’ excitement to fuel their energy and positive attitude throughout each tournament.

As we mentioned earlier, these are a only a few of the roles that are filled every year by volunteers.  President, Team Manager, Hockey Ops, Secretary, Treasurer, Volunteer Director, Recruiting Chairperson….the list is endless!

We hope you will take the time to recognize one of the fantastic volunteers in your association by nominating him or her for the Total Hockey Volunteer of the Month! Each month of the season we acknowledge one volunteer by highlighting their efforts and providing them with a couple of thank you gifts, including a $100 gift card to Total Hockey.

Thank you to everyone who volunteers in the hockey community (and to our current/future U.S. Presidents) for taking on the thankless job that are so vital to success!