If you read further down on the page, the coach explains how he chose to use it (and how he recommends others use the system):
Quote:
Purpose
Use “The Captain” as a tool to elicit specific behaviors that you want to see from your players. Use it to develop healthy leadership skills, both on and off the ice, a stronger work ethic, positive attitude, teamwork and good sportsmanship. You can use “The Captain” to encourage listening, creativity and originality, vocalization of constructive input, on and off ice help, and the enthusiastic encouragement of fellow teammates. You can use “The Captain” to set performance goals. You can set ‘terms’ for your Captains and Assistants, allowing all other players to compete with your current leaders for those top spots, making each player earn their role, all based on what you decide to set as achievements.
Process
Set aside a couple minutes before game time to award the Letters. Call the player who is to receive the Letter and as you attach it, tell them why they are receiving the award. This reinforces persistent desired behaviors to the player and their teammates. The player is immediately empowered and gets a psychological boost. Their teammates are inspired to work on behaviors that will compete for who will become “The Captain".
and from another page:
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.
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Kind of like coaches who award a "Play Maker of the Game" award in the locker room after each game (mentioning setting up plays, getting assists, etc., rather than emphasizing goal-scoring/puck-hogging), this is something that gets reassigned every single game, so that nobody is getting it "taken away" from them -- their time runs out at the end of their game, and they turn them back in to the coach in the locker room.
If you've ever seen the pride in a kid's face when it's his day to be the "line leader" for the day in kindergarten class, you know what a "boost" this can give a kid.
We all know that at the younger ages, it's the coaches and not the Captains or Assistants who are communicating with the refs... but this at least gets the kids thinking at an early age about how EVERYTHING they do affects their standing in the eyes of the coaches and teammates. If the coach awards a C to a kid in front of the whole team and mentions that it's b/c of his hard-working attitude at the last practice, then Little Johnny Snowflake might decide to be more respectful and attentive at the next practice in the hopes of catching coach's eye with the next game in mind.
I would also like to see a coach work academics into it sometimes, maybe awarding the letters for one game each year to the kids who had the top grades on their latest report card, etc. (and not just b/c Dom gets all As -- as the goalie, he can't wear the letter anyway -- but b/c I think it's important for coaches to emphasize balance in a player's life -- school, sport, community, etc.).
I don't know if Dom's Squirt coach names Captains and Assistants, but I'm going to send him this link so he at least has that as an available option!
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