For Players, Fast Pulses; for Parents, Raw Nerves

ETROIT, Jan. 17 - The score was tied late in the second period. Both teams were skating at a grueling pace and checking more fiercely than you'd imagine pre-teens would or could. This was the Little Caesars Hockeytown Invitational, featuring 16 of the best teams of 11-year-olds in North America. The loser of this game, either the Long Island Royals or the home team, the Little Caesars, would be eliminated.

Suddenly, one of the Royals picked up the puck at the red line, fought off a check and bore in on the Little Caesars' goal. He flashed across the goal mouth and backhanded a shot - a gorgeous move - that passed over the goalie's shoulder, but just deflected off the post. No goal.

"His old man is going to kill him," said Jimmy Burnside, whose son J. R. is on the Royals.

Standing three rows below him, another father, Ronald Fishman, whose son Ronald Jr. is a defenseman, turned around.

"And rightfully so," Mr. Fishman said.

Were they kidding? Well, they weren't being literal, of course. But if you travel for the weekend with a team as accomplished as the Royals, what you see - aside from some exciting hockey - are parents on a balance beam, intent on supporting their children but always in danger of slipping off into self-interest and allowing their children's dreams to become their own.

Understandable as it is that they are excited by their sons' skills and triumphs, many of the Royals' parents openly admitted that the excitement could skew their judgment and that they struggled with the line between serious support of the Royals and going overboard.

With the score still tied, you could sense that some of them were getting edgy as they shouted provocations at their sons.

"Why are we standing around? Step it up out there!"

"If you're going to cry about it, why don't you sit? Be a man!"

Still, these are not the win-at-all-cost villains of popular legend. Incidents of parents crossing the line - there were whispers in Detroit of a parent from another team hurling his son against a locker after a poor game - are repeated as cautionary tales. But the danger, many said, was present.

"You watch them play and you start treating them like a miniature professional team," said Steve Young, whose son Tyler is a Royal, and who helps out as an assistant coach. "And that's what you have to be careful of. They're only 11 years old."

As a window on the world of competitive youth travel sports, a phenomenon that has consumed the lives of thousands of families, the weekend in Detroit illustrated most of all that the emotions of high-level competition are pitched higher for the parents than for the players.

"What was the plane ticket, a hundred-fifty bucks?" asked one father, Steve Kreuscher, during the game against the Little Caesars (which the Royals eventually won). "You can't get this much excitement for that money at Madison Square Garden."

While the boys occupied themselves with video games or football on television when they weren't playing hockey or getting ready to play, the parents spent evenings in the hotel bar. Like the kind of pro sports fans who follow a team from city to city, call the local sports talk-radio station to complain about the coach and paint their faces in team colors on game day, they replayed the games of the day over burgers and beer, weighed the relative strengths of the tournament teams, grumbled about referees' calls and debated the skills of other people's sons.

"The parents are much more wound up than the kids, absolutely," said Mr. Fishman, a former ticket broker from Roslyn, N.Y., who now owns a convenience store. It is true that for many of the young Royals, hockey is at the center of their lives, important enough that some of them skate every day, take lessons or go to clinics before school and arrange their schedules around practice. Virtually every Royal parent noted that the boys on the team were all solid students, and that the rigors of playing hockey on a traveling team had helped them in using their time efficiently and developing self-discipline. A typical comment: "If he knows he has to do his homework before he can go to practice, he does his homework." This is the rationale for pulling their sons out of school for at least a day to play in a three-day tournament like this one.

Their home ice is the Superior Ice Rink in Kings Park, on Long Island, but the players come from all over Long Island and as far away as Rockland and Westchester Counties, drives of an hour and a half or so that they make twice a week for practice, usually at rush hour. And then, of course, there are weekend games all along the East Coast, from Boston to Washington, and special tournaments like this one. To judge from the Royals, many parents are amazed at how their sons' hockey lives have completely sucked them in.

"I don't even like to go from the couch to the refrigerator, and now I'm doing this?" said Richard Pernesti, who lives in New Rochelle, N.Y., and, with his son Richie, is one of the long-distance travelers. (To save money on air fare, the Pernestis, along with two other families, piled into an S.U.V. and drove 11 hours to the tournament here.) "That'll give you an idea of how involved I've gotten."

Richard McGuigan, who runs the travel hockey program at Superior and is one of the coaches of the 11-year-olds, said he had tried to dissuade the faraway parents from committing to such an inconvenient commute; he even offered to find them programs closer to their homes. But the parents were attracted to the idea of success; they knew their children were good players and wanted to see them excel. That creates a slippery slope in itself.

And though every Royal parent gives sincere-sounding lip service to the pure virtues of competition - the development of discipline, an appreciation of teamwork, a boost in self-esteem and the idea that being busy is preferable to being idle ("I grew up on a street corner, and I don't want that for my kid," said one father, Ernie DiChiara) - you can sometimes hear, as the parents explain their devotion to travel hockey, the unmistakable resonance of dreams of glory.

"All these kids are exceptional athletes for their age, so the expectations are high," Mr. Fishman said. "If they were doing this casually, we wouldn't expect so much. But if they're serious enough to take them out of school, it makes sense that we're hard on them."

The victory that earned the Royals an invitation to Detroit was in a tournament in Ottawa, where they beat the Toronto Marlboros, a team that had won 38 consecutive games in a legendary youth hockey program. A rematch against the Marlboros, popularly known as the Marlies, was highly anticipated. It also gave the Royals' parents a reason to swagger; in Detroit they spoke often of having a target on their backs.

But the rematch with the Marlies never materialized because the Royals lost their quarterfinal game to a team from Pittsburgh; their opponents' goaltender played a sensational game and turned away attempt after attempt by the Royals. And luck seemed to be against them as well. It seemed evident that they were tired; their skating was sluggish.

Some parents were forgiving.

"It takes it out of them," said one mother, Dawn Young. "The travel, the party, the hotel, everything. It's their fourth game in three days, against tough teams. It's a game of focus, and when they start to get tired they lose focus."

Others were in agony.

"There's like an invisible force in front of the net," said Pat Forgione, whose son Thomas is on the Royals. "The goalie's not even there and it won't go in."

Mr. Forgione nonetheless gave credit where it was due, acknowledging that the Royals had run into a skillful and motivated team. And all the Royals' parents were good sports, standing and applauding for both teams as they came off the ice, with several of them shouting "Good game, boys," at the Pittsburgh team. The recriminations came a little later, in private conversations: some were critical of the coaches' devotion to some of the weaker players on the team. Meanwhile, in the locker room, where parents are not allowed, the boys were upset. Some were in tears, though they didn't last long.

"You can't win them all," said Frankie DiChiara with a shrug, his eyes not quite dry.

Mr. McGuigan gave a speech.

"You guys are all great hockey players," he said. "I don't care what is said to you when you walk out this door. I don't care. I'm proud of you."

A heavyset man in a white sweatshirt came into the room with a bucket of candy bars, which he passed around to the players. He was the trainer for the Marlies.

"No crying, boys," he said. "Hockey players don't cry."