So having been inspired to return to blogging about life, the universe and systems following a lecture given by Dr. Lee Fallin I thought I would write a blog about sports volunteering and systems thinking.

Last weekend I had a meeting to discuss a project to enable more people to participate in playing ice hockey.  By coincidence the person I was meeting with played for a street hockey team that I was involved with as an teenager in the early to mid nineties.  This, I suspect, will lead to a future post about systems thinking and connections, but I digress.

At the meeting I was reminded how my introduction to ice hockey came through becoming involved as a volunteer for a street hockey team in the West Midlands called the Leasowe Sharks.  Now, as a disabled person I was not able to play street hockey, but I was able to interact and participate through becoming a volunteer.  My role at the Sharks was to run the clock during games and I also wrote the media reports which were published in the local papers.

As a direct result of being involved with the Sharks I started watching ice hockey at Solihull Ice Rink and became a fan of the game.  As a result when I moved to near Hull with work I discovered that there was a Paralympic version of ice hockey called Sledge Hockey, which meant that I could actually play ice hockey rather than just volunteering.

As a result of learning to play Sledge Hockey, something that was only possible thanks to some dedicated volunteers (especially Simon Berry) I was able to rise to a standard that meant I was selected to play for the Great Britain team, and then due to unforeseen circumstances I was then called up at the last minute to represent Great Britain at the 2006 Winter Paralympic Games in Turin.  

Following on from the Paralympics I was then able to represent Great Britain at World and European Championships as well as enjoying getting to play a sport I love throughout the world.

So what has this go to do with systems thinking you may ask?  Well one of the concepts associated with systems thinking is “holistic thinking”, that is seeing a situation as a whole rather than as separate parts.    Taking the Sharks, if they didn’t have someone volunteering to run the clock then the game couldn’t have taken place, and if I hadn’t been able to play in goal maybe the hockey games couldn’t take place.  However I wouldn’t have been able to play in goal if there wasn’t volunteers running the club in Hull or providing coaching to teach me to play Sledge Hockey.

It is the interplay between of all the component parts that is a major factor in making the system work.  It is important that we consider the whole rather than just the parts.  A person is an individual but is also part of team.  And a team cannot function without people to undertake key roles not involving directly playing the sport. But a team cannot play games if it doesn’t then take part in some sort of competitive activity, and in order of competitive activity to take place there needs to be a system in place to organise the competition.

In May next year (2022) I will turn 50.  And thanks to volunteering with the Sharks over 30 years ago I am now part of many systems including on a professional and personal level, and I remain an active volunteer within ice hockey and within British sport.