By Rick Van Arnam
Northfield, Vermont
In the summer of 1976, my parents did something cool to our house. They started an addition large enough for an indoor swimming pool. Back then, a house with a swimming pool was as cool as any flat screen, home theater set-up available today and the fact that it was indoors made it an over-the-top project. I have fond memories of our pool, which was really a lengthy do-it-yourself project that was the vision of my dad, an architect. One early memory of the construction involves an excavator used to both build a road to the site and to dig the actual hole that would become the pool. In maneuvering the excavator in a tight spot, Fred the operator snapped the front-left steering rod making the tire swing freely and out of control. The excavator was inoperable. At that point, Fred hopped down off the seat and colorfully announced the obvious and optimistically declared that it could be repaired and made better than new. And that is exactly what he did. He brought in his welding torches on the same road that he had made and quickly repaired the break. It was the first time that I had ever heard that steel repaired by a weld is stronger at the weld than before the break. Welding can be a pretty sophisticated science, but it is true that if done correctly, a weld can be stronger due to the intense heat required in the process.
The idea that something can be made stronger through a healing or fixing process provides hope and that may explain why so many people choose to persevere through adversity and tough situations. Fred’s welding repair is the inspiration for the fifth of my eleven character principles titled, The Weld Principle, and states that, “When a break is properly repaired, the scar makes you stronger.” More important than the principle is the accompanying question, “How will you learn from mistakes or failure?”
Especially in the world of sports, who doesn’t like a good comeback story? Each of the major sports actually recognizes a Comeback Player of the Year with an award. It doesn’t really matter why a player was eligible for consideration – most fans respect and often pull for, a player who has undergone a major challenge, whether self-induced or not, and returns to excel.
This week, flying under and behind the radar of College Basketball’s Final Four, is College Hockey’s Frozen Four. Like the personal interest stories that emanated from basketball’s March Madness, there are stories associated with the hockey’s Frozen Four. The Fighting Irish may have a difficult time reaching College Football’s BCS, but the hockey program is strong and their fans hope that Notre Dame will reach the finals as they did in 2008, and win, for the first time ever. For fans who love to cheer against Notre Dame, they can hop on the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s bandwagon. The Bulldogs, of such famed alumni as Mark Pavelich (1980 Olympian) and Hockey Hall of Famer, Brett Hull, will also be looking to secure their first-ever national championship. On the other side of the semi-final bracket are Michigan and North Dakota. No school has won more national championships than Michigan and combined they have appeared in forty-three Frozen Four tournaments.
But The Weld Principle storyline that comes out of the Frozen Four this year rests with North Dakota senior Matt Frattin, who is a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award – college hockey’s premier award recognizing the year’s top player. A 2007 draft pick of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, he had been dismissed from the team by head coach Dave Hakstol prior to the start of the 2009 season after separate incidents resulting in two arrests. Skeptics will say that the coach’s decision in early 2010 to re-instate Matt Frattin was more about winning than anything else. Comeback enthusiasts, though, want to believe that Frattin learned from his mistakes and has matured his character in the process of becoming a dominant college hockey player as a senior – a year in which he led the nation with 36 goals and developed into a NHL-ready player. Either way, there is plenty to learn for all of us who face a point at which we have scratched, dented or broken our character.
First, coach Dave Hakstol cracked the door for Frattin’s re-instatement when he said in dismissing the player that, “But we also care about Matt Frattin and would like to put him in position to be able to lead a healthy lifestyle and resume his hockey career.”1 Hakstol went on to say, “Frattin’s status with the team might be revisited.”2 I have written before that the real need for purposeful character development is to close a gap that exists between skill, which can be developed in people younger and younger, and the maturity of their character, which takes much longer. Providing a chance to re-visit a player’s status provides hope and some mild encouragement without the promise of anything.
Second, Matt Frattin appears to have taken the more difficult road to the Frozen Four. A few of college hockey’s top underclassmen opt to leave school early for the pros. Frattin likely could have done just that. Had he done so, our last memory of him in the college ranks would have been his dismissal press release, not his appearance at the Frozen Four. There were conditions Frattin had to meet in order to be considered for reinstatement which points to the greatest learning related to The Weld Principle. When something in our character breaks, we need to have a plan – and follow it. Common components of any plan would include accepting responsibility and any punishment, seeking professional help for an area that may be at the core of the problem, avoiding all circumstances that could slow repair or create more damage, and establishing accountability by sharing the plan with a person or an organization that has genuine interest.
Why do fans enjoy comeback stories so much? I’m not sure there is a scientific answer to that question. But I think it has to do with the most important character trait of all – humility. Humility can grow out of humiliation and I think in most cases, an athlete who recovers from a character break, feels humiliated when he reads his name in the paper portrayed in a poor light. And facing the media at the Frozen Four and the Hobey Baker Award ceremony, you can bet that Matt Frattin will face at least as many questions about his past as he will face about his future. I’m hoping that under that stress, Matt Frattin will show us signs of being stronger reminded by the scars of his past – that is The Weld Principle.
RVA
Credits
1 Junior Forward Matt Frattin Dismissed From Men’s Hockey Team, FightingSioux.com, August 19, 2009
2 Ibid
UMD, Notre Dame hope to join NCAA elite, by Bob Snow – NHL.com Correspondent, March 30, 2011, NHL.Com
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