Time to Refocus & Pursue Our Original Mission

By Scott Lowe – DMVProspects.com
When you’re just one person, you can’t be all things to all people.
 
Realizing that is not the hard part, though. Making peace with that reality and admitting that it’s an accurate statement is the challenging part. Then, once you’ve accepted it as true, it becomes imperative to figure out what steps that can be taken to ease the burden on yourself without compromising your overall mission.
 
When I started DMV Prospects and DMVProspects.com three years ago, the vision was pretty simple and straightforward. I wanted to help elite hockey players in D.C., Maryland and Virginia who had dreams of playing hockey beyond the 18U and high school levels – and truly were willing to make the enormous commitment required to do so – achieve their goals.
 
That’s a pretty broad statement, and I realized quickly that it was actually too broad. As I thought about all the different kids playing at all the different levels for the various clubs in the DMV who probably thought they wanted to play college hockey, the prospect of promoting all of them – or at least as many of them as possible – became overwhelming.

Looking back on the process as it evolved for my son – and remembering the age at which he truly became serious about wanting to pursue college hockey as well as when it became critical for us to develop a real understanding of what that process would entail – I determined that I would focus on helping players who were age 15 and up.
 
While coming to that conclusion certainly helped narrow my focus and seemed to make the proposition manageable, more clarity was necessary – for myself and those who I would be attempting to impact.
 
My son made the decision as he moved from being a Bantam “A” player to the Midget level that he needed to compete against better players if he was going to ultimately achieve his goals. The decision to move up to the AA level led him to a Howard Huskies program that would provide him with that opportunity while also helping him to grow as a player, a person and a leader – all things that needed to happen if he was going to eventually play at the NCAA level. That also was the year he first was selected by the PVAHA to attend the USA Hockey Southeast District National Camp tryouts, which in turn provided exposure and opened up AAA and other growth opportunities for him.
 
Given our uncertainty about which opportunities my son should have pursued at a time when it became evident that he might have a future in hockey, I determined that tailoring my current efforts to players who are 15 and older and were playing at least at the AA level made the most sense and would be manageable. Since his path was unusual in that he didn’t play AAA hockey until his second 18U year (by his choice) and still ended up getting drafted by teams in both the NAHL and NCDC, I felt it was important to include AA players who might have the talent and drive to play junior and college hockey but who hadn’t played at the AAA level for whatever reason.
 
And so it was decided that DMVPropsects.com would focus on promoting, educating and developing elite players 15 years of age and older who were playing at the AA and AAA levels and were committed to pursuing hockey beyond their youth and high school years.
 
You can’t be all things to all people.
 
The website and Twitter would serve as the primary vehicles through which I would promote local teams and players as well as the opportunities that I would providing to  players and families, including advice and networking, showcase teams, clinics and seminars with junior and college coaches, an elite summer league and training opportunities.
 
While I felt badly about narrowing the focus of the business so much, I came to the realization that there were many opportunities for lower-level travel and rec players to play and enjoy hockey without the demands and commitment required of players who wanted to continue developing and carving a path toward playing at the highest level they could attain. Opportunities intended specifically for the elite and committed players who I would be targeting weren’t nearly as plentiful.
 
Again, something had to give since I couldn’t be all things to all people. Still, I wanted to promote as many local players and teams as possible at the AA, AAA, prep and junior levels. And I wanted to educate as many players and families as possible about the commitment required to get to the level my son and others who had advanced to his level and beyond had achieved, the various pathways players could take to reach their goals, the hurdles and obstacles players likely would face and the potential mistakes and pitfalls that could set families back along the way.
 
What I failed to realize initially was that the vast majority of AA – and even AAA – players and families in our area weren’t aware of the commitment that was required to play NCAA hockey in terms of delaying college enrollment to play juniors, the potential expense and the off-ice training that was necessary. And of those who already were aware or who I had made aware, a large percentage of them weren’t willing to make that commitment, meaning that really only a very small percentage of the kids playing 16U and 18U AA and AAA hockey in the DMV really possessed the drive and desire to play NCAA hockey.
 
Those were the kids I wanted to impact most, especially the ones who had the ability and desire to keep playing but had never been able to play at the AAA level because of the cost, politics or any other reason. There also were AAA players who weren’t getting the opportunities they deserved at that level – and maybe weren’t promoted by their club and coaches as much as they could have been – and who with the proper guidance, exposure and training had the potential to play at the NCAA level.
 
I was determined to promote these players via the website and Twitter; to provide articles and resources that could assist with the educational process and allow them to determine the best pathway for themselves; to introduce them to higher-level coaches with new philosophies from outside the area who they could learn from and build relationships with; to create and help them find opportunities to skate with those same  high-level coaches in practices or training situations; to develop on- and off-ice training opportunities for them with junior and college players; to provide them with advice and information upon request; and to allow them the opportunity to play in the top spring and summer showcases and be seen by coaches wiithin my network who could help them achieve their goals.
 
In a nutshell, that has always been my mission. The problem was that, even though I had narrowed and clarified my vision to make it more manageable, as I built and grew the website and Twitter account – and people in the local hockey community caught wind of what I was doing –  I often allowed myself to get sidetracked as I tried to build a following.
 
Initially I spoke to as many AA, AAA, prep and junior coaches as I could in the area and built “Players to Watch” lists for each team based mostly on coach input combined what I knew about players who I had seen play. Almost immediately I got emails from parents questioning why their players weren’t on a team’s watch list or what they could do to get their players on that list.
 
I learned quickly that many people in the hockey world want recognition or opportunities handed or promised to them without those things being earned. So, in an effort to please the masses, I contacted every AA, AAA and junior program, introduced myself and told them I that was hoping to post weekly write-ups about all the local teams and would appreciate any information they could send me after their weekend games along with their nominees for Goal of the Week and Three Stars of the Week features.
 
The response to this request was lukewarm at best.
 
Don’t get me wrong, there were some amazing parents, coaches and team managers who responded and have provided me with tons of information about their teams over the past three years. I am forever grateful to them for taking the time to send the information and helping me promote their programs, but they were the overwhelming minority. Others would only send me information when their teams won or when their kids scored or did something special.
 
Each week I would spend hours searching the internet for whatever information I could find about how our local teams had performed the previous weekend and looking for information and videos to help me complete my summaries, select the three stars and have a goal of the week to promote. Most teams provided nothing, and many club and team websites offered little or no information. But I didn’t want to leave anyone out, so I took the time to do the best job I possibly could and provide as much information to promote the local players and teams as possible.  
 
I did this for the high school programs in the area, too, and even tried to create a panel of coaches and local hockey experts to help me select a prep top 10 each week during the school season. That also took a lot of time, but it was important to me to do a thorough job once I had committed to something.
 
The incredible amount of time it took for me to put these weekly summaries together – along with all the other features – didn’t bother me, because I was getting so much positive feedback from the hockey community and building my following. To me it was worth the investment – until it wasn’t.
 
At some point the tide turned and Twitter – and seemingly much of our country – became very angry. Instead of compliments I started getting complaints from parents about not including some kids in my reports or about a couple of typos in a 5,000-word self-edited document. Some parents questioned me for not mentioning a AAA player who had scored seven goals in a high school game against mostly A- and B-level players.
 
Then some kids started to go after me on Twitter, accusing me of ignoring and disrespecting their teams or favoring other teams and not giving them the credit that they deserved. There were many rude and inappropriate Tweets and comments coming from teenagers in a public forum without any of them being held accountable by their coaches, families or teammates.
 
This was ironic for a couple reasons.
 
First, the parent and player complaints and comments always came from people associated with teams or clubs who had flat-out ignored my requests for information for three years or had terrible websites that provided little or no helpful information.
 
Second, almost without fail, the chirping was coming from players and families who were not the ones I set out to help. For the most part they were looking for recognition to satisfy their own egos, and the players had neither the ability nor the commitment and drive necessary to seriously pursue hockey after their youth and high school careers concluded. In fact, they had no interest in my vision or what I was trying to do for local players with lofty hockey goals.
 
That’s when I realized, once again, that in trying to be all things to all people I had deviated from my mission and spent probably hundreds of hours trying to make the wrong people happy.
 
These encounters were hurtful, disappointing and discouraging. They also made me angry to the point that I considered giving up the website and Twitter and focusing on individual kids who wanted my help. Some of the worst exchanges occurred just a few weeks prior to the COVID shutdown, which gave me plenty of time to dissect everything.
 
Creating a member newsletter, which I since have made available to everyone who ever has participated in a DMV Prospects program, was something that I never had the time to do but always wanted to implement. The shutdown gave me the opportunity to provide more helpful educational materials and also to develop a section of my website that provides more resources and information in one place for players and families trying to figure out this process than any other website I am aware of.
 
Being able to lose myself in my writing and provide something truly helpful and useful for the people who actually crave and need the assistance – the same people who I initially set out to help three years ago – was both therapeutic and satisfying. The positive feedback that I got from so many of you about the newsletter as well as the spring Zoom sessions with college and junior coaches rejuvenated me and helped me understand once and for all that I needed to refocus my efforts. So, thank you for that.
 
I felt that it was the right time to address all of this now that we are a few weeks into the 2020 club season for some area teams. I’m sure some folks are wondering why I haven’t been very active lately.
 
Well, first of all, given the uncertainty surrounding the current season and many other factors, information about teams is even harder to find than ever. I just don’t have the time or desire to spend time that I don’t really have tracking that stuff down anymore.
 
And second, my days of posting lengthy weekly summaries that take hours to prepare and tend to only highlight players who score a lot of points – even if they are playing weaker teams – instead of promoting the true junior and college prospects in our area who are really committed to the process and need all the exposure they can get are done. That goes for high-school hockey as well.
 
I will remain committed to working with MyHockey Rankings to produce an unbiased, algorithm-based ranking of our local high school teams (if they ever play), another project that takes up a good chunk of time but that I think has a lot of potential value for hockey in our area for many reasons. On Twitter I will continue to retweet any scores, information and updates that followers send me about local club and school teams. A lot of people follow the account, and I have no problem promoting local youth and high school in that manner.

But as far as everything else is concerned, my focus will return to the players and families I initially set out to help. With that in mind, here is what you can expect:
 
  • The Hockey Prospect Help Desk Newsletter will continue to be produced 2-3 times per month. For now it will continue to be free to everyone who has helped me build DMV Prospects to this point and anyone else who requests it. Donations to support the newsletter will be accepted via Venmo at slowe0738 and PayPal at slowe0738@gmail.com.

  • Along with the newsletter will come more educational articles to help families navigate their journey as well as video lessons, off-ice training articles, college and junior program spotlights, guest-coach articles, local player pathway to college profiles and other helpful articles. The Help Desk resource area also will continue to be developed and grown for the benefit of our customer base and others who are in search of that type of information.

  • Educational Zoom sessions will return. One is being planned with New England Prep School coaches for some time in the next two or three weeks. Others will be set up with NCAA, ACHA and junior coaches from various levels and parts of the country to answer your recruiting questions, help you build relationships and expose you to new schools and opportunities. There also will be Zoom sessions with coaches that will cover skill development, strategy, positional play and more.

  • Instead of weekly summaries and results for teams, there will be more feature-type articles about teams that are having strong seasons, programs that are developing players and helping them advance to higher levels, players from our area who have moved away and are considered top prospects and local teams with NCAA and ACHA prospects on their rosters. We also will be covering more AA and AAA games in person and providing scouting reports from those games that highlight the top prospects instead of just the players who score all the points.

  • Video analysis services will continue. Our video analysis isn’t the fanciest, but no one puts more time or effort into their video analysis of players than we do. We analyze every shift, pointing out the good aspects and areas that need improvement. We spend several hours for a single player to produce these and provide detail that you won’t get from anyone else. We can use video from HockeyTV and LiveBarn, or you can send us raw footage that you have shot. In addition, we will be partnering with a videographer who can shoot games so the footage looks as professional as possible and who also can edit the video. More on this to come soon. Once specific areas of a player’s game that need improvement are pinpointed, we can put the player in touch with college and junior coaches for more position-specific video instruction. In addition, we will provide video services for players who are looking to create YouTube channels to help promote themselves to prep school, junior and college coaches.

  • Skating and training opportunities with college and junior coaches will be planned during holiday breaks as well as during the spring and summer. Dates and locations TBD. Stevenson University NCAA Division III head coach Dominick Dawes will be holding skills and skating sessions at Reisterstown on Fridays in October. CLICK HERE for information and to register.

  • Our 10-week summer training program for AAA, AA, prep and junior players ages 16 and up (15U players can apply) with Coach Dawes, Stevenson University players and local NCAA players will be held again starting next June. More information will be sent as details are available.

  • Our spring and summer Sunday Elite Hockey League (SEHL) for NCAA, ACHA, AAA, AA and prep-school players ages 16 and up (15U players can apply) will return in 2021. Information about the 2021 SEHL season will be available before Christmas.

  • We will take teams to several of the top spring and summer showcases in the Northeast in 2021. More information will be available soon. We will enter teams at the 19U and 20U levels for sure and also at the 16U level If there is sufficient interest.

  • Player development and placement services and packages (including advising) are available for players and families who would like to work with me, our staff and my network individually.

  • The website will go through a gradual makeover in hopes of turning it into a true destination for prep school, college and junior scouts and coaches who want to learn about the top prospects – as well as the under-the-radar prospects – from our area.

 
Hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I wanted to update everyone on the direction of DMV Prospects and DMVProspects.com and let everyone know how excited I am to continue helping young hockey players from the DMV achieve their goals and assisting families as they attempt to navigate what can be a confusing and lengthy journey to college hockey.
 
Thank you for your past support. Stay safe and be well.