by Charlie Adams, StokeTheFireWithin.com
Many of you, depending on the sport, have been signing athletes to National Letters of Intent this month. As they commit to a college, they are at the height of dreaming. They are thinking big things such as championships, making life long friends, being made better by their coaches, and maybe evening doing the unthinkable! You may have a program that has never reached a certain height. Maybe their class will be the ones to get there.
The 35th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice is this month. February 22nd will be the anniversary of the 4-3 win over the Soviets. February 24th will be 35 years since Herb’s boys beat Finland 4-2 in the gold medal game.
The magnitude of it can never be lost. When you think about it, it is staggering that many observe it as:
*Greatest moment in U.S. sports history – Sports Illustrated named it the greatest moment of the 20th century and nothing bigger has happened since!
*Greatest upset in U.S. sports history
*Greatest sports call ever – “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
*Greatest Sports Illustrated cover ever – the only one to go without a caption because everyone in America knew about it.
Think about that. Even Super Bowl and Final Four and World Series issues need captions because millions of Americans are not dialed in. But back then, everyone was into it. I was a 17 year old 12th grader in Oxford,
Mississippi, where we had never seen a hockey game, and yet we went nuts about what they did in Lake Placid, NY.
While many young people have seen the movie Miracle, a lot of 18 and 19 year olds, the ages of your recruits have not seen it. I did my program on it for a small college program recently and hardly any of the athletes knew of their story. You may want to encourage them to, or set up a time for everyone to watch ‘Miracle.’
As you mold your recruits into your programs, remind them that Herb Brooks did not build a dream team, but a team of dreamers. He had a team with big egos, just like many of your recruits have big egos, but he did not have ego problems.
That 1980 team started the slide that ended Communism in the Soviet Union, saved the Winter Olympics from being terminated by the IOC, and galvanized a nation. Sure, no college program can come close to that, but as you develop your recruits why not set a goal to be significantly involved in the community and to make a lasting difference in a particular charity? Why not take dead aim on starting the process that ends bullying in your local schools?
As you continue to rate recruits for your next cycle, remember to never lose sight of heart and grit. Goalie Jim Craig was barely recruited out of high school and many experts had 5 or 6 college goalies rated above him, but Herb rode him the whole Olympic way because he was the right player, not the best player. Author Wayne Coffey said it was arguably the greatest performance under pressure in the annals of Olympic history and that it forever redefined the parameters of athletic possibility.
Mike Eruzione, who scored the winning goal vs the Soviets and was a great captain, had no D1 interest out of high school until one school stepped up summer after his high school senior year. That was Boston University, and they ended up with a young man who smashed many of their records and terrorized schools that had overlooked him in recruiting.
In recruiting, it is a combination of getting blue chip kids and finding those kids that are 2 or 3 stars with the fire within. Herb built his Olympic team with studs and with some kids that other experts on the Committee wondered why he was going with them. He had done extensive evaluation over two years, calling all kinds of credible sources, and
watching extensive film.
He recruited a lot of really talented players. Over half would play in the NHL. The one thing about the movie Miracle that I am not crazy about is at the end when they show little profiles of the players, they only put up what they did in regular life, like working for financial companies. It was almost as if Disney didn’t want the movie viewers to know that these kids were good enough to play pro for many years, and wanted them to think Herb took a bunch of average college guys and stunned the world. Herb did raise their levels, as he always said you don’t put greatness into people
but you pull it out. But he also built his team with a good bit of talent.
So, as always it is a combo of recruiting strong talent along with talent that embraces roles, and getting them to dream.
This is a good month to talk to them about dreaming. Never limit your college program on what it can achieve.
“We should be dreaming. We grew up as kids having dreams, but now we’re too sophisticated as adults, as a nation. We stopped dreaming. We should always have dreams.” – Coach Herb Brooks