Survey Results - Conclusion

Stay or Go?

Ok, parents. You've waited long enough. The last section of the survey cuts to the question at hand - how many families are moving to a new hockey program next year, and why? Let's get right to it.

(You can find results from Part 1 of the survey here and Part 2 here.)


According to the survey, 22% of the respondents are moving to a different hockey program next season. Since each response corresponds to one player, that means that roughly 1 in 4 players will be switching programs next season.

Graph 1: Are you planning to move to a different hockey program in 2013-14?

I was watching the results for this question closely while the responses were coming in. At one point it was tracking closer to 30% before it started to go down, settling just under 25%. When I think about players leaving my home rink that seems like a realistic level. It varies of course from team to team, but overall 25%-ish seems about right. 

Thinking about this from the perspective of a hockey director - that's 1 in 4 players you need to replace each season from outside the program just to stay the same size. In theory, those players should be available since 1 in 4 players will be leaving all the other programs too. But not all programs are created equal. The programs that can retain more players are the ones that will grow, at the expense of the others. 

There will also be new players joining the world of youth hockey each year. Which programs they go to will be another factor in determining which ones grow. We can theorize that, for new players, proximity to home is a major factor in that decision. We can also theorize that there are more "new players" at the younger age groups relative to the older ones. The ability to attract new players is important. But if a program is not able to retain them it could lead to the situation where the teams are healthy at the mite level but begin to thin out at the older ages. Retention is still the key to growth.

This is one question I wanted to dig into in more detail since it's so important to the overall results. There weren't enough data points to evaluate individual programs. Looking at differences by age level, a much higher percentage of players at the Bantam and Midget levels are planning to change programs - 42% combined. At the other age levels, a lower than average percentage of players (17%) are planning to move next season. Is the Bantam level the point at which many "original" parents - the stragglers - finally decide a change is needed?

There are differences by skill level too. Below the A level, movement is much lower - only 12% of B level players plan to change programs next season. And at the AAA level around 18% of players are planning to move. But that percentage increases to 30% at the A and AA levels combined.

So what can we take from this? There's not much in the way of conclusive data on which age groups or skill levels experience more "migration". The results of this question are interesting, but these differences could possibly be tied to individual teams or coaches. I'd need more data in order to see if these results hold up.

Top Reasons for Staying with a Hockey Program

Now that we know how many are staying and leaving, we can turn to the reasons why. First, the reasons for staying with a hockey program.

Parents who indicated the are planning to stay with the same program next season were asked, Which of the following were the most important reasons for your decision to stay with the same hockey program? They were given a list of 10 choices and could also write in their own responses. They were asked for their top reason, second reason, and third reason for staying.

Graph 2: Showing total responses by choice for top reason for staying with the same hockey program next season.

Graph 2 shows that Had a good experience/very satisfied with current program was the top answer with 37% of the responses (31 responses). Happy with coaching at current program was next with 26% (22).

Happy with coaching at current program was the most frequent answer for the second reason for staying at 23% (19), followed by Ability to play with a specific group of players and My son/daughter wanted to stay at 16% each (13).

Graph 3: Showing total responses by choice for second reason for staying with the same hockey program next season.

An interesting answer made the top of the list for third reason for staying - No reason to leave got 21% of the responses (17). My son/daughter wanted to stay, Current program is closer to home/less travel required, and Ability to play with a specific group of players were all close with 10-12% of the responses.

Graph 4: Showing total responses by choice for third reason for staying with the same hockey program next season.

Graph 5 shows the results in aggregate. The red, green, and purple bars are the top, second, and third reasons for staying, respectively. The blue bars represent the total number of times that each answer was chosen as any one of the top three reasons for staying (the blue bars are the sums of the red, green, and purple).

Graph 5: Summary of total responses by choice for reasons for staying with a hockey program.

You can see that there is a variety of reasons that parents stay. At the top of the list are Had a good experience/very satisfied with current program and Happy with coaching at current program. Many parents decided to stay because their children wanted to, which of course is indicative that the children were happy with the hockey experience last season. Proximity to home is also a big consideration, as is the ability to play with a specific group. No reason to leave was selected 11% of the time, but I'd say it goes hand-in-hand with Had a good experience/very satisfied with current program. Those two answers demonstrate the power of inertia - if programs can manage to "keep the customer satisfied" then why leave?

At the bottom of the list, it's a little surprising that Quality of communication at current program, Quality of management at current program, Players treated fairly at current program, and Satisfied with ice time at current program received so few responses.

Top Reasons for Leaving a Hockey Program

I'd venture to guess that most of you are more interested in this next section on why parents choose to leave than why than you are in why parents stay. Let me get right to it. 

Parents who indicated the are planning to move to a different program next season were asked, Which of the following were the most important reasons for your decision to leave? They were given a list of 12 choices and could also write in their own responses. They were asked for their top reason, second reason, and third reason for leaving.

Graph 6 shows the answers.

Graph 6: Showing total responses by choice for top reason for moving to a different hockey program next season.

As you can see, the responses were all over the board! There was no real, clear-cut top reason for leaving. The top answer was Former program not icing a team at the desired age group/level, but only by one response. Five other choices tied for second.

The results were similarly frustrating for the second and third reasons, as you can see in the following graphs.

Graph 7: Showing total responses by choice for second most important reason for moving to a different hockey program next season.

Graph 8: Showing total responses by choice for third most important reason for moving to a different hockey program next season.

It's difficult to draw any conclusions looking at these questions in isolation. In aggregate things look somewhat different.

Graph 9: Summary of total responses by choice for reasons for moving to a different program.

Taking all of the responses into consideration, Had a bad experience/dissatisfied with former program came out on top just barely with 13% of the responses (9). Next are My son/daughter wanted to play for a different program and Unhappy with management of the former program with 11% each. But you can see that there's still a difference of only one response each between several of the choices.

This seemingly simple question turns out to have a complicated answer - or rather, answers. It seems there are lots of reasons parents move around from program to program!

There was one more way of looking at this that I wanted to check. I would argue that there are positive reasons for leaving a program - such as moving from Tier II to Tier I - and there are negative reasons for leaving a program - such as being unhappy with the program's management. 

Players are always going to leave for the positive reasons, to advantage of an opportunity. The best outcome a hockey program can strive for is to minimize the number of players who leave for negative reasons. 

So which happens more often?

To analyze this I grouped the possible answers to this question into three categories - positive reasons, negative reasons, and neutral reasons. 

Positive reasons: 

• Moving from Tier II to Tier I or vice versa
• Ability to play with a specific group of players
• Higher quality coaches at new program (this one could arguably be a negative if it really means the former program has inferior coaches)
• New program is closer to home/less travel required
• More available ice time at new program

Negative reasons: 

• Had a bad experience/dissatisfied with former program
• Unhappy with management of the former program
• Too much politics/Not treated fairly at former program
• Unhappy with level of communication at former program
• Player not selected for desired team within the former program
• Other (believe me, they were negative!)

Neutral reasons: 

• My son/daughter wanted to play for a different program
• Former program not icing a team at the desired age group/level

Graph 10 shows the results when viewed in this way.

Graph 10: Showing % responses by category for top three reasons for moving.

Based on this survey, 34% of the time parents move to take advantage of an opportunity or for some other positive reason. 19% of the time parents move for a neutral reason. Which leaves 47% of the time that parents move to a different program for a negative reason - to escape a bad situation.

Remember I noted that Higher quality coaches at new program could be interpreted as a  negative (i.e., parents were dissatisfied with the coaching they received last season)? Well if I make that reason a negative instead of a positive, the percentage of positive reasons would drop to 26% and the percentage of negative reasons would rise to 56% - as seen below.

Graph 11: Top three reasons for moving - alternate view

What does this mean? Like I mentioned, some players will always move for positive reasons and the best a program can hope for is to minimize the number of players that leave for negative reasons. Let's say that's about half of the total players who leave. That means that hockey programs could potentially cut the number of players they lose each year in half if they could minimize these negative experiences. Instead of 1 in 4 players leaving the program each season, it could become 1 in 8, a major improvement.

Open Response

The final section of the survey (except for some demographic questions) was an open response section. I asked parents to leave any other comments they felt were relevant to the survey. I really want to thank those of you who left comments. Some of them were funny, some were biting, and many of them were insightful.

I've been thinking about the best way to share those comments.  What I've decided to do is to re-print many of them here, anonymously. They are unedited, except for what you see in [ ], which are my comments. I've also removed references to specific teams and programs because ... well, just because. If you want to continue the discussion in the comments, I'd encourage that.

Here are some of the open response comments:

"On[e] attribute of the survey should of examined the level of follow-up and communication regarding the "program" or "level of play" from the hockey club during the season.  There is barely ANY feedback provided to the parents during the hockey season (i.e. hockey club, trends, feedback on level of play within the parent/player's division, etc...)."

* * * *
"Fair evaluations for all players,  Teams should not be set before evals start.   Out side sources for Evals to ensure fairness to all players."

* * * *
"We will eventually jump teams, just not this year. Because of the position he plays [Goalie], he will never be able to play at his skill level after the 13-14 season."

* * * *
"I cannot believe our head coach for last season [edited] team will be this years [edited] head coach.  I feel so bad for those kids and more so for their parent's wallets.   When a coach can have their kid play for free they don't have much invested it seemed last season.  The worst coaching or lack there of any of my 4 kids ever had in any sport, not to mention the most expensive.   What a waste of over $2000 last season."

* * * *
"The [edited] have struggled since we have been involved with their program to be able to put together a competitive team.   It has become an issue with my son always playing on a losing team and we think it has decrease his drive to play hard and put in his best efforts at practice and in game situations.  We really dont care so much about being the best team in the league, but it gets old always getting your butt whipped."

* * * *
"Steve, it is my opinion the main reason of club jumping is a few things. First, " rink politics" I have left a program because of it. I am currently at [edited], this will be our 3rd yr there and it is here as well. There's no escaping it. To elaborate, I find that if your not in the good ol boy club your kid suffers. My son again next year has become a victim of this practice. Once again he was not properly placed(based on skill level) on a team. I don't see next year to be a winning season for him. All I can hope for is for him to personally develop his game. The second reason is the quality of coaching, unfortunately most times you don't know if the coach is a good fit until the season is underway. I experienced this with my youngest son. luckily he is a goalie and i requested for him to play up as a [edited] to avoid the same coach who is going to coach [edited] again. Lastly, if your kids not happy or not making friends worth moving up with you move on and search for that right fit. I hope this helps, and as you know this is only one mans opinion and experience."

* * * *
"I like the non-political way that the [edited] run evaluations, they bring in outside people and people from other teams in the organization and as a group they pick teams.  They don't do what other organizations do and have evals, when teams are already picked. They limit the amount of outside influence from parents and others when evals are going on.  They place the best players at the appropriate levels.  The coaches have say, but can't pick all their 'buddies' kids or only the players that they want."

* * * *
"When we looked for a program, it needed ot feel comfortable to us and our son. He needs to have fun while he is out there and he had a great time this year while improving to the point that he wnet from B to AA.

Hockey is funny how families can move form one team to another, while in other sports you need to participate by your location (whether it be township or school district) until you ge tto the travel level. This is both a good thing and a bad thing for hockey teams.

While I know that my son is decent hockey player he is never going to the NHL and will most likely not play D1 hockey in college let alone get a scholarship. What is most importnat to us is that he has fun and continues to enjoy it. And as long as the organization meets this need we will stay with it. There will always be things that we do nto particularly like about an org but that is how it goes with most sports."

* * * *
"The #1 reason people leave organizations is because of a lack of communication and commitment

Second reason for leaving is coaching, people go where the coaching is

Third reason are the surrounding parents trying to self promote themselfs"

* * * *
"would like to note that had a certain coach still been with our current program, we would have looked elsewhere."

* * * *
"Will never go back to [edited] after season we had with them.  We were informed 3 tournaments included in our cost - only got 2.  No reimbursement either.

Firing of 1 coach that was good to hiring a really weak, unprofessional style of coaching staff.  Program management lead us to believe we would have more communication and that the new coaching staff would be better and it was worse.  

I felt that the program took advantage of our money and ran with it.   No way would I ever go back to that program."

* * * *
"For the cost and time ice hockey is generally poorly run.  There is to much politics and essentially a dad's club, especially when the owner/management are weak.  There is much more instruction on any little league baseball team that costs about $125/per child from men who love the game and truly want each player to develope.  In my opinion hockey needs to get rid of the daddy coaches who play their kids to exhaustion thinking they will improve them.  Better coach selection needs alot of attention."

* * * *
"We live in State College and there are not enough kids play to form teams at different levels, so teams are always mixed (skilled to non-skilled), with parents coaching.  My son was ready to make the jump to AA [edited] (which might be AAA in Philly) and to do that we had to go to Altoona (at least) to find a team - another option a bit farther is Hershey.  Hopefully with the new Pegula ice arena, hockey will continue to grow here and hopefully over the course of several years this situation will change."

* * * *
"We are past the "fun" stage. He wants to play with like minded kids of his skill level. We as parents searched out a program within our drive radius that would be a good fit. It was his decision to leave [edited], it was a Family Decision to go to [edited]."

* * * *
"The support for goalies this year was non existent and the rink did nothing to address it. The coaching staff on our team had a terrible demeanor with children that were not coaches kids, the team did not even dress together before practices, the coaches & their kids dressed separately from other players. It was extremely disappointing."

* * * *
"This is our eighth year at [edited] and would never play anywhere else.  It is well run facility.  By far, it is the nicest rink in the area.  

Hockey has been a major contributor in the development of our son into a confident, happy and productive young adult."

* * * *
"Very happy with the [edited] program. Prices are low to attract all individuals interested in playing the game. Very family oriented and that's good for any one who's interested in having FUN!"

* * * *
"There are too many AAA teams in the AYHL
Costs need to drop
Tryouts should be in August
Coaches need to be screened"

* * * *
"We had a great year, besides a successful year in regards to Wins/Losses, my son developed as a player from last August to this past March......We had an excellent Coaching Staff, and it will be tough to duplicate this past year because it was such a special season.

Many Parents in youth sports have too biased of an opinion on their child's skill level, which leads them to believe that the grass is sometimes greener some where else!"

* * * *
"There is not solid coaching philosophy or team philosophy directed from the board. Also,especially at the B level it should be developmental, not about recruiting kids from different areas just to win hockey games. The kids need to learn about winning and losing."


* * * *

Conclusion

That concludes the first annual Beeski Hockey Parents' Satisfaction Survey but it doesn't have to conclude the discussion. You've seen the results, now have your say in the Comments below.

Thanks to all the parents who participated and to all who read the results. If you enjoyed the survey, let me know by leaving a comment or sending me an email. You can also choose to follow this blog (enter your email address in the form on the right side of the screen) - that's the best way to make sure you are notified when I update the survey next year.

As the season approaches I'll be expanding this blog to include news and notes from different teams, including game recaps and maybe even highlights. That's going to require some help from you, and I'll be looking for contributors to send me updates from different teams. If you're a hockey parent who likes to write and stay involved in your child's team, send me an email and I'll get you on board.

In the meantime, share this survey with your friends, fellow hockey parents, coaches, and your hockey program directors. The more people who see it, the better it will become. 

Thanks for reading and I'll see you at the rink!

- Beeski