Welcome to "The Captain."   As a first time coach, I was looking for a way to encourage and inspire my Squirt house hockey players.  One idea I considered was the use of permanently bonded letters to designate a Captain and Assistants, but it didn't seem to fit this age group and with my education as a social worker.  I needed to find a more suitable use to designate team Captains and Assistants. These youth players were just starting to grasp broad concepts of the game...let alone leadership skills, on & off-ice tools, and how, when and why they would communicate with referees. I also didn't want to single out any players with permanently bonded letters.

So I spent painstaking hours hand-cutting, sewing and ironing the little letters into a temporary appliance that I have developed into "The Captain".  Even when I coached in the Bantam division, "The Captain" was still a fitting award for my teenagers and they looked forward to the honor of wearing these awards.  The “How It Works” page is a brief guide and is intended to explain the purpose, procedures, processes and general philosophy for utilizing "The Captain".

Using "The Captain" has been a beneficial and successful tool as a coach and every player embraced the system on our teams. I encourage you to give every player an opportunity to wear a Letter.  Sometimes it might seem difficult (as we all have had experience with) to find a behavior that you want to encourage in some players.  But if you look hard enough, you will find something you can promote within each player... and that player will greatly benefit from the acknowledgement of an award.  At season end, I have made it a custom to let the players vote on who most represented the Captains and Assistants on the team.  As a final send off, I awarded the Letters to the 6 player’s who receive the most votes.

Good luck on your season,

Chris Bardy,
Creator of "The Captain"