How We Did It: The Subban Plan for Success in Hockey, School and Life - Scott Colby
With all of this talk around #Diversity and Hockey, We wanted to highlight this interview from earlier.
Scott Colby is the Opinions Editor at the Toronto Star and a freelance writer. He lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter and son. He is the co-author of the national bestseller "How We Did It" with NHL hockey dad Karl Subban.
Conversation :
What made you want to write this book?
When I was growing up in Thunder Bay, Karl Subban was a high school basketball coach of mine during the summer when I played in camps and summer leagues while he was attending Lakehead University. In fact, he was one of my childhood heroes because of his incredible work ethic and how approachable and encouraging he was to kids like me. I eventually became a journalist and at one point was I writing a parenting column for the Toronto Star. Through the column I reconnected with Karl, 30 years after we both left Thunder Bay. I wrote a column about him. At this point I knew he was the father of NHL superstar P.K. Subban and I knew he was a principal in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood in Toronto, one of the toughest and undeserviced in the city, but I didn’t know he also had two accomplished daughters and two other boys who had been drafted and signed by NHL teams. I said to Karl, you have lived a fascinating life; you need to write a book. He agreed, so we wrote the book together.
2) Karl is a former school principal, how did that effect him as a father?
This is a good question and one we addressed in the book, which was on the national bestsellers list for five weeks. I interviewed all five kids for the book and they told me they sometimes had to remind their dad he didn’t have to be a principal at home. So Karl sometimes had a difficult time turning off that role of keeping kids on track. Karl felt when students were at his school he was their parent. And at home, he knew his kids has so many more advantages than so many of the kids he was responsible for who had a tough home life. But that didn’t stop him from expecting that they work hard and not take anything for granted. He knew what happened to kids who weren’t disciplined and also given encouragement.
3) Hockey, School and Life - What are the common themes on these in your book?
Karl always says, “hockey is life and life is hockey.” The lessons you learn in hockey will help you in life and the lessons you learn in life will help you succeed in hockey. And those same lessons will also help you in the classroom. Set goals early, big goals. Another of my favourite lines from Karl is, “The bigger the dream, the bigger the team.” So, surround yourself with people who can help you achieve your dreams, in hockey or in school or in life. Work hard, learn from your mistakes, and avoid the distractions that will derail your dreams. In all areas you need to load your GPS for success, and the great thing about pursuing your dream is that a better dream might come along.
4) What can parents learn from some of the lessons you have outlined with Karl?
Parents can learn so many tools for success by reading this book. The subtext of this book is potential: how to develop the potential of any child. Developing your potential is the greatest give you can give to the world.
For me, the biggest take aways are to spend lots of time with your children. The people who spend the most time with your children will influence them the most. Also, children need adversity to succeed. Another Karl line is, “You need to go through something to become something.” Kids need to develop grit. They need to know what they are capable of by facing obstacles and adversity. And finally, as parents, and I believe this, you need to dream for your children until they are able to dream for themselves. Get them on the road to something. At some point your kids may take up that dream for themselves or develop a new dream but get them moving and motivated and working hard early. Nobody place you on top of the mountain.
5) How can Dads become better at encouraging the progress of these children in sports?
One of the key lessons Karl learned is that kids learn at their own pace. It takes time, keep them working at it, but try to avoid comparing your kids to each other or other kids. As long as they are doing the right things, they will progress. For Karl, he wanted his kids to be married to practice. Practice was far more important than playing the games. Practice is where you learn your skills and discipline and develop your work ethic. Don’t place and emphasis on winning while they are kids, place an emphasis on practice and evolving the practice to kept it interesting and increasingly more challenging. When kids are young, make them do drills for 15 minutes, then let them play shinny. As we wrote in the book, there has to be a large element of fun still, or kids will push back and lose interest. But do it every day. Or as many as you can. Five days a week of practice is better than four and six is better than five.
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6) How did Karl tackle themes around racism and sport with his kids?
This is one of the most important lessons we wrote about in the book and the question we are probably asked the most. Simply put, Karls says, don’t let racism be a distraction from achieving your dreams and goals. Karl and his wife Maria would tell the kids, “Are you going to let someone calling you names stop you from playing hockey. Come on, you need to have a thicker skin than that if you want to make the OHL, or the NHL.” They emphasized that racism was wrong and kids should not be saying racist comments to them, but forget about it and move on. Racism is just a distraction, one of many to be avoided if you want to achieve you goals. All five kids will tell you that thankfully they didn’t face a lot of racism growing up. Karl says the same thing about growing up in Sudbury. Karl says he will never know what affect racism may have had in limiting what he could achieve in life, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it or have it stop him, or his children, from pursuing their dreams. He has shared this message far and wide and one of Karl’s biggest fans is NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley. In fact, Barkley came to Nashville to watch the Stanley Cup finals in 2017 and took Karl out for dinner to discuss his views on the subject. That meant a lot to Karl and photo of them together is in the book.
7) What surprised you the most as an author when writing this book?
A few things surprised me. One was that despite the massive amount of effort it to conduct the interviews, do the research, coach Karl on his writing and of course doing my own writing, was that in never once felt like work. I loved the entire process.
I was also pleasantly surprised how we were able to write the entire book in Karl’s voice. The style is very conversational and I didn’t know starting out how successful we’d be at that. It was important to Karl that the book be written in his voice. It helps he has a distinctive style of speaking.
And as a father — I have 6-year-old twins — I was surprised a how much I needed this book myself. As Karl says, “Parenting is hard.” It sure is and I frequently went to Karl for parenting advice.
Here is a link to the book:
Scott Colby is the Opinions Editor at the Toronto Star and a freelance writer. He lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter and son.
website: scottcolby.me