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Saucey

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Everything posted by Saucey

  1. That happens all the time anyway. Reffing is not great here.
  2. I hear ya. Then don't have a AA designation. Isn't that what PAHL is moving to anyway? Force all the AA kids to play an independent schedule.
  3. What does that have to do with the teams coming up? I don't see any teams coming up that are anywhere near as good as that Renegades team was. Or tell me which team you think is going to be equivalent. Look at 14u last season. There were a couple of teams at MidAms battling it out. The winner....got their clocks...cleaned...at Nationals. I am not trying to be nasty or negative. I watched a bit of some of those MidAm games and I didn't think I was watching very good hockey. It is a fact that 07BY is very low. And yes, never been overly impressed with what I have seen with the 08s. The dilution to go play AAA coming home to roost. PAHL may be competitive with each other, which don't get me wrong, is good. But 16uAA is supposed to be the big year. I am ok with being wrong. I want Western Pa to be competitive on the national scene. Again, ok with being wrong. Just don't see it at the moment. Someone mentioned Rebellion being really good. Where did their influx of players come from? Did they get all the SHAHA 07s? Don't forget, the Renegades team was largely able to stay together with few roster changes for years. That does mean something. That never happens in PAHL these days.
  4. I don't think that will elevate the landscape that much. We will see. Would be nice to not have whoever goes to Nationals not get their clocks cleaned.
  5. Really? Was there a big influx of 07s into PAHL? It is usually pretty bad.
  6. Middle school hockey is just terrible in general. Don't forget the differenced in growth and age. And even AAA players don't match well against older players, even when the older player may play a lower level. And who knows, maybe you were looking at those faux AAA players too.
  7. Actually, I know that gentleman, if he is involved all I can say is, RUN AWAY and do it fast lol.
  8. To be fair, what low level team sells enough tickets to cover expenditures?
  9. They were looking for people to try out a few days ago
  10. I don't know but I do know there was talk about pulling up some of the 16u AAA players to play, so maybe they ended up with not enough to players
  11. 18uAA is always a bit of a crap shoot. 05 was a very low BY and some of those kids are going to college. Some choose to exit the sport. Some are tired of the grind that they have had since they were six and just play school. This is nothing new.
  12. @Spear and Magic Helmet I don't think letting more teams into AA is a great answer. Then you aren't addressing the issue the independent teams complain of with the competition. And it's miserable to play blow out games for the kids, no matter which side of the score sheet you are on. That's terrible if you care about development. I don't think that is accurate, that the top A team could always be AA. Sometimes a placement was wrong, but more often than not, that team still gets killed by the better AA teams. Remember, AA is diluted. So you are right, that top team may compete with some of the AA teams, but then...where do you draw the line?
  13. Honestly, the AA team you just described may compete perfectly fine in PAHL. Just not beyond that. It's that diluted. But I hear you. Maybe they won't place in AA. I don't know about that with closed try outs. Maybe you have a point. But kids seem to relax and play better without parents watching. I have never watched my kid try out, so I don't quite relate to this need. Do you really think a parent who has never played hockey before really needs to be in there to then crap all over the try out process? Parents are truly just awful these days. It's not everyone, but enough made that bed with behavior and are working to have it so that they can't watch games either. I don't have much sympathy on that. These are volunteers you are abusing. Working g on no refs too.
  14. I think parents and all these AAA options have created this try out monster, quite frankly, and it is not quite fair to blame organizations. What do you really want them to do? If the goal is to put together a National bound team and it was advertised as such, then that has to be the goal, to win. But....you do need to cast a side eye at someone who has...tried out every year and never accepted a spot on your one team. Or not played AA for years. F those kids, I don't care how good they are, they never stay and you then annoy your long time family who frequently walks away. Stuff like that. It's hard to know what people's intentions are. No one can read minds. But those ones are easy red flags. Maybe make a call first to those players, ask if they are going accept the spot before you announce the team. It's a lot of work. You hear conflicting complaints on this thread.....that loyalty is not rewarded. That spots should not be offered to AAA kids. Then you hear complaints that teams are hand picked and try outs aren't fair. Well, if you are rewarding loyalty rather than picking the best that came to try out, then yes, they are hand picked. And the team that goes to Nationals should be good, otherwise they are going to get their butts handed to them in Nationals. It is very possible around here that Mid Am teams won't be able to hang at Nationals with how bad AA is becoming. Look at Nationals results from 14u last year. And....you would be hard pressed to find any organization in Pittsburgh that doesn't already have an idea of who they want. You are usually trying out for a few spots if you are an unknown to an organization, so you better be good and stand out, because bubble players are interchangeable with many other players, usually, and quite frankly, those spots should be offered to the family that has stayed with the organization. When close, tie goes to the loyal. It just should, because again, you risk that unknown player walking AND you lose the long time player. It causes lots of damage. In an ideal world, you only go to try outs where you want to play for that team. But....if the try out for the team you really want is far away, I know people use tryouts to keep their kid on the ice. If you don't, then they don't look as good as the kids who were doing this. It is sometimes really hard to find ways to keep on the once the season ends, particularly as your kid gets older. And not everyone can afford to pay for privates. I think the organizations really struggle to field appropriate AA teams and it is a multi faceted problem. For the first time ever, my family chose not to play on the lowly A team when not offered a spot on the top team at an organization. It used to be that your kid could develop on those teams and I would say you should take that spot and not be offended. But everything is so diluted, that this thought is no longer the case. The drop is sometimes huge between the top teams and the next team down. So no....not paying thousands of dollars for that. Hockey isn't just for fun. It also has to be for development. Winning comes after development, but it has to be there and appropriate for your player. Otherwise just save your dollars for when they can play beer league. PAHL is headed to no AA, quite frankly. The independent teams are going to start winning Mid Ams.
  15. I would contact the director of hockey development at organizations to see if there are any openings or get on their radar when there are. Kids tend to leave or decline spots or get hurt, leaving a spot. I would contact bigger organizations rather than ones putting anyone on a team regardless of skill. That isn't good if you care anything about development.
  16. Not supplemental but NP tries out this weekend. They were last to go I think.
  17. Yeah don't forget this is the squirt parents we were complaining about for insane behavior in the stands just a few years ago. They definitely have superstars.
  18. Youth sports is big business, and the lengths people will go to in parting families from their money is disgusting. They don't care. I belong to a discussion group and a parent posted asking if a mass email they received for a camp was a money grab, and of course it was. The amount of justification that the guys making money from these camps gave, and the offense they took over it being called a money grab, was mind boggling. All the parent wanted to know was whether it was a mass email or if they should believe what the email said. Then advertise it only as a camp. Don't couch it in all that language designed to make that parent believe that a scout somehow saw their kid play. You know what kids and parents are thinking when you pepper the email with 'personal invite' and mention 'get noticed' and whatever. If someone is savvy enough to ask, they deserve an answer. They aren't targeting that email to the kids who already have an invite to the main camp. Not everyone has the money to spend on 'getting the experience'. You want to make money off other people's dreams and mislead them into parting with their money, too bad if someone lets the air out of the balloon. All this hand wringing over the bad behavior of parents in the stands.....they are responsible for their behavior. But the sport should take a look at their own part in helping to create this monster. People weren't always trying to live off youth sports. What those guys were really upset about was... don't kill my cash cow by confirming that their main interest in sending you that email was your checkbook, not your kid.
  19. Did he create a free profile from NCSA through TeamSnap? Lot of fluff comes from that, too. We did get one legit that led to something.
  20. I am sure that team disbanding was not because of the coach. When you lose key players and presumably there was nothing there to replace them, those chasing will go somewhere else. A goalie is really important. Or maybe it was the coach, didn't have someone lined up to replace them. Parents and families also get a narrative going.... it's not that my kid is not AAA talent, it was this one coach or this one player, but for that we would have had a great season! So they go somewhere else the next year and rinse repeat. Pretty much the grass is greener. Our geography also just still plays into it, I think. It's not an easy sell to get from a different direction to play at YMCA.
  21. Particularly since, if you look at Esmark's rosters at the older levels, they have fewer and fewer local kids rostered every year. That's the same complaint for PPE. The young local kids funding the rest of the older out of state teams.
  22. It's sad that even brand spanking new parents are playing the run the gauntlet game. It costs a lot of money to do this, and yes you risk losing commitment fees. I don't know how organizations deal with this, gets worse every year.
  23. Why are they happening before Pens? I imagine that a lot of people will still walk if they get the nod from PPE and eat the commitment fee.
  24. No the players are not being served. If the result is this mismatch of talent, someone isn't developing or playing at the right level.
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