Losing sight of the goal: Highlighting parent concerns within Canadian minor hockey programming

The presence of negative parent behaviours in the Canadian minor hockey system has long been an issue affecting developing athletes, coaches, and other invested parties (e.g., referees, administrators). While quality research has previously explored (a) how poor parent behaviour can affect others within the minor hockey space and (b) what factors could be causing unwanted parent behaviours, little scholarship has given parents an opportunity to think through and reflect on their specific lived experience while inhabiting the hockey parent role. As such, the aim of the present study was to provide this group with an opportunity to discuss the issues they have experienced within their minor hockey communities. To accomplish this, current hockey parents were recruited to engage in a web-based discussion using the platform ThoughtExchangetm. Through a two-step process, participants (n = 75) were able to, first, disclose anonymized feedback regarding their lived minor hockey experiences before, second, rating their fellow participants’ input in terms of agreement and personal relevance. As such, consensus regarding which issues appeared most important to the group were rendered visible and categorized qualitatively by the research team. Participants agreed that a lack of organizational (a) support, (b) transparency, and (c) focus on players’ needs were areas requiring the most attention within their minor hockey programming. Given these findings, it is suggested that working to build less opaque and more child-centric minor hockey environments through updated policies and norms could be a fruitful means for programmers to mitigate poor parent behaviour in the future.