The game inside the game

February 26, 2014 · 0 Comments

Dear editor:

I read with interest the article in our local papers last week with regard to police officers attending Shelburne Minor Hockey games. I honestly was not surprised but I was most definitely upset to see where an organization for children has ended up.

Members of Shelburne Minor Hockey are giving up their time from many different sects of life. There are policeman, paramedics, firemen, teachers, owners of local businesses, the list goes on and on involved in this organization. The point, I believe, of this organization is to provide a safe environment for our children to play the sport, to learn to interact with others with RESPECT and work as a team. Unfortunately, this is not always being achieved. We now have coaches on the bench cursing the referee or degrading him or her with words far from praise. As you can imagine, this then passes down to the children on the ice using profanity to the referee and then it gets worse. We have parents actually taking to social media and posting “on their private site” the name of the referee, profanity against the referee and total defamation of character. It seems that this is okay because unless that person actually succumbs to personally losing something from that post nothing can be done. What are we teaching our children? I do want to clarify this does not apply to everyone but it does come as a shock who it does apply to!

Are you prepared to give your time and energy to do this job if you find it is done so poorly? Did you ever see on national TV a sport played where a call was either missed or wrongly judged by the official of that game intentionally? Is your goal to actually create a personal vendetta against a certain individual? Does an official want to see an injury occur? I believe we can all answer no! So, why is it allowed in a small town community organization such as this? I am sure we have all seen the ads and been advised in our workplace of the rules against bullying. Does this not fall in that category? When you are at your place of employment would you accept being treated in this manner?

I know personally the people taking on this job in our community for this sport are doing it for good. They are giving up their own personal time in order to give something back to an organization where they received something good. They do not go out to come home feeling badly. They want to come home feeling good knowing they have achieved their goal, a love for the sport, giving back to their community and encouraging others to take on a job that is truly necessary to have this organization continue.

In ending, I would like to praise and thank the people who are trying find a cure for this bad situation. The board of Shelburne Minor Hockey and President Mike Fazackerley are doing their best in a time when light at the end of the tunnel is not very bright unless the whole team comes together to work.

Sharon Giles,

Shelburne