For many of us members of Team USA, the summertime is when we break out of our comfort zones as athletes and take on the infinitely challenging role of coaches. The majority of my teammates and I coach in some capacity during the warmer months, and those experiences tend to provide enough fodder for an entire winter season of mockery and merriment. This summer has proved to be no different. I coach a couple of camps a summer, instructing players ranging in age from 6-17. It's a pretty big age spread, which makes group lessons difficult at times. You never really know what sort of question is going to come out of the kids mouths at any given time, so you have to be wary with each raised hand that impropriety may loom his ugly head when least expected.

For example, one young lady, who will remain nameless, raised her hand to ask, "You went to Harvard right? So you are really smart right? My brother is really really smart. He got a perfect score on his SATs, what did you get?" This girl apparently thought that my dissection of the defensive zone was so intellectually stimulating as to merit a survey of my mental aptitude. I have found that the solution to these types of situations is to immediately search the sea of expectant faces for another hand in the air that you can call on and change the subject. For the sake of propriety in this blog, I had to keep it clean, but you should hear some of the questions these kids ask. They are definitely not all this tame. That is all I am going to say about that.  

Another fun component of summer coaching is the infamous demonstration. I coach with my teammate Angela Ruggiero a couple of times a summer and our favorite thing to do is to force the other person into a situation where she has to do the most complicated demonstration possible. At best, she will fall or make a fool of herself, or at least get totally exhausted from the exertion. Believe me, after five straight hours on skates, even the most basic demonstrations have serious embarrassment potential. If we get bored of this game, we tend to make the "rookie" coaches (college players or new coaches to the camp) do ridiculous demonstrations that take forever and cause them to finish heart racing, in a cold sweat. You know who you are coaches...

Last week I took my coaching to the next level, coaching a team of high school and college girls at the Chowder Cup Tournament outside of Boston. This is the second year I have coached this team, and not only are we consistently in the hunt for the title, we spend our time off of the ice raising money and awareness for breast cancer. It has been an awesome project since day one. We have raised close to $10,000 each year. Unfortunately we have not brought home the title yet, but there is always next year.

Sadly, however much I am bolstering my karma through charitable deeds, it doesn't seem to be enough to rid me of the bad karma I have amassed elsewhere. I say this because each year, without fail, as I give both philanthropically by raising money and philosophically, by teaching younger players what I have to offer in experience, I inevitably fall on my butt while walking across the ice to shake hands with the opposing team at the end of the game. This may also be on account of the flip-flops I was wearing (they were pink and went with the theme so I thought it was cool), but this year, I took one of our goalies down with me (not so cool). I think I am going to chalk it up to taking a fashion risk for a higher purpose and leave it at that.