Now Is the Time

John Krupinsky, an assistant coach with Connecticut’s Danbury Hat Tricks of the Federal Hockey League, recently delivered a pointed speech to his team as training camp opened.

“Listen up for a second,” Krupinsky said. “First day of camp. Something really important. We’re not women’s soccer. We’re not the NFL. If there’s anybody here that’s gonna be disrespectful to either the American or the Canadian national anthem, grab your gear, and get the f— out now. ‘Because you’ll never see the ice in this arena. We don’t have that problem in hockey. We’re better than that. But there’s no sense in wasting anybody’s time if that s— was gonna happen. I don’t believe it would happen here. We’re the most patriotic sport that they have out there. Just keep that in mind, thank you.”

His speech has gone viral, and interestingly it was apparently given squarely in the middle of the U.S. Women’s National Team’s run to the World Cup championship. How refreshing! Hooray for Coach Krupinsky.

If anybody on the Hat Tricks hockey team feels strongly about presumed. social issues then he clearly has a choice to make. Either do not play hockey for the Hat Tricks, or put on your big boy pants, play hockey, and keep your issues to yourself, out of the public eye. 

I am a big soccer fan, and I like to watch the games. I do not enjoy seeing or hearing supposed grown-ups pouting and acting out for some fuzzy causes, especially if the acting out is occurring when they are representing the USA. I did not watch the Women’s World Cup final. I did not watch any of the postgame shenanigans. I did not watch the parade in New York . . . no desire to do any of the above. I did, however, watch the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team play Mexico that same Sunday night. There were no shenanigans, no protests by either side. I got what I tuned in to see . . . good soccer!

Now that all of the hoopla about the Women’s World Cup is hopefully over, I have a few questions for the U.S. team, in general, and the players in particular. 

Is there a “Coach Krupinsky” in the U.S.A. women’s soccer higher echelon? At this point we know that the actual coach would not, could not, or was told that she should not stand up to the acting out by some of the players. So now the question is whether or not anybody is now going to do anything similar to what coach Krupinsky did? If so, now is the time! No one in the NFL had the courage to stand up to the kneeling players, and that did end well for the NFL, and the commissioner ended up looking like a fool!

The second question is about the rest of the players on the team. I understand that it would not have been a smart thing to have team dissension during the middle of a grueling international tournament. (Let the adult-adolescent captain act out, but let’s focus on soccer.) However, the World Cup is now over.

From my perception, either the entire team or most of the team agrees with Rapinoe, and has opinions similar to Rapinoe . . . or they don’t. And if they don’t, now is the time for them to speak up. When they get invited to the White House to meet with President Trump, are some or perhaps a large number of them going to go? Or are they going to follow the Pied Piper, Megan Rapinoe, like young children . . . right out of town; alternatively are they going to stand up and speak their own mind. This is important because their actions could well determine the fate of women’s professional soccer in the U.S. Even more important for the female soccer players, if the team is viewed as anti-American flag, and anti-National Anthem, this could well doom their striving for comparable pay. Most of the women on this team have gone to college, and presumably understand that in essence the public pay their salaries, as it is the public that pay to go to the games. Public opinion counts! Are fathers and mothers in the Heartland going to take their daughters to a game and have to watch demonstrably anti-American female soccer players? Are they going to pay to listen to potty-mouths like Rapinoe. I don’t think so!

Now is the time for all good women soccer players to come to the aid of their country. 🇺🇸