The biggest thing we get out of it is seeing the kids smile. And hopefully we will also see that the lessons we're teaching - not only the fundamentals of hockey, but also the life values - are sinking in.
Interpretation
The joy of teaching and coaching is seen in the happiness of children and the values they learn beyond the sport.
Bobby Orr reflects on the profound impact that teaching children both fundamental sports skills and important life values has. He highlights that the most rewarding aspect of coaching is witnessing the joy and smiles of the kids, which indicates not only their enjoyment of the game but also the life lessons they are absorbing from the experience.
In practice
A coach might use this quote during a team meeting to emphasize the importance of character building.
Growing up, if I hadn't had sports, I don't know where I'd be. God only knows what street corners I'd have been standing on and God only knows what I'd have been doing, but instead I played hockey and went to school and stayed out of trouble.
Once you turn pro and you're making the big money and kids are buying your sneakers and your skates and your gloves and so on, you are a member of that role model club.
Minor sports in the community is fun and recreation for everyone, not just the elite. I think back to my days in minor hockey and those are my fondest memories, having fun.
I've been a very lucky guy. I played on championship teams. I played for Canada. I've won some awards and I'm very proud of those accomplishments. But I don't think there's anything greater than to come home and to be recognized at home. This is the pinnacle.
I was the happiest guy in the world when I was on the ice. You're being paid to play a game! That's pretty special.
If you're going to help somebody, sneak in, sneak out, do what you can. I just sneak along and do my thing and meet wonderful people, some people I've never met, new friends.
I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know.
The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.
So much crap passes as information that not only does the audience sometimes miss the distinction between news and crap, the editors sometimes miss the distinction.
A woman might claim to retain some of the child's faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.
The first ten, twelve or fifteen years of life are excavated of inherent moral worth in order to accommodate a regimen of basic training for the adult years that many of the poorest children may not even live to know.
Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.
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