Saucey

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.

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.

It's midget

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.

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.

I was attacked on this Board for suggesting that club programs were telling you to go play juniors. ?

Soooo....sometimes children do get passed over for these reasons. If you develop a reputation, there are coaches and orgs who will choose to not deal with you. Then there are the organizations who do.

There are certain organizations that attract the crazy parents. Those organizations aren't interested in controlling the parents. My family (and kids) have never been interested in playing for an organization where a holey is tolerated either on the ice or off. The behavior IS a part of the game. Eventually you get penalized, etc. And it is embarrassing. Being associated with a team calling you to girls that they shouldn't play hockey? No. No. No. I don't care how skilled the team is.

That is an awful story. Madden reported that he was let go from his Arizona college team before going to Mercyhurst. He partied too much.

We hunting unicorns now on this Board? ? Ask a ref.

Yes and you have to have a HS program cool with that. Quite frankly, you aren't really supporting a high school team if you are missing games to go to a practice.

I don't think options are bad. We have too many. It results in the dilution of talent and hurts development. And...what you think you want after coming out of a tryout, what a kid needs, etc are often different. We cannot and should not protect our kids from every bad thing that can happen to them. How many times have I seen a family leave in the heat of the moment only to be like...oh, my kid isn't going to the show and maybe that faux AAA team was a not such a great idea.... I mean, we have a lot of coaches on this forum. Coaches are a little better at judging what is a good fit for their kids. Parents around here, without hockey backgrounds, trust no one who may just want to help their kid. They just hear, come play with us, your kid is fab at AA/AAA regardless of whether that is true. And they are gone. A parent driven market hurts. But I think we may in a few years have a market driven by Black Beat. The other extreme is also not good.

Pick one of the rare 7 PM games and people may cane out to watch. This is a good idea. Wouldn't it be nice to build high school hockey to Minnesota State levels. ?

I hate seeing programs disappear and feel for the Vipers, but continuing to hang on without a home is a huge problem imo, like Aviators. Give it up at some point. The kids will find a home. I feel that it should be a requirement that your program has an ADM program in order to compete at Nationals or PAHL playoffs. Having all these programs just take the work of what other organizations are doing just isn't right. It might curb the I am going to spring up my own team over here because I am butt hurt you didn't put my super star on team 1 problem, too.

I think you missed my point. The Pa schools are EXPENSIVE. Even factoring in our of state tuition, a lot of Ohio schools offer enough in aid to be comparable to or less expensive than Pa schools. Has nothing to do with hockey politics. Maybe you know one family that got shafted. I sincerely doubt it is the wide swath you want to paint.

This has been our experience exactly.

He is a pretty good hockey player with good grades, decent SAT scores, and went to a high school in a good school district. Played both AA travel and AAA high school and was a leader on the teams. He got into most schools he applied to. Good enough hockey player that some of those better ACHA programs were receptive to his overtures. The college search was a little difficult because I don't think he knew exactly what he wanted in a school. We visited a lot of schools. He applied to A LOT of them, both in and out of state. Colleges make it harder on themselves and the kids by offering free applications, I think. Those fees make you pause a little before applying. I did a lot of check ins with him because he was initially pretty excited to have a coach interested in him, and he wasn't thinking about cost or if the school was a good academic fit. He committed to a good school. Club hockey may or may not be in his future. The school does have its own rink and intramural hockey, which I didn't even know was a thing, so he can still get hockey if he wants if he doesn't make one of the club teams. That made him happy. It all just ends at some point. ?‍♂️ But truly, the beauty of hockey is that it doesn't have to end. It is a sport where you can still do it if you want, for as long as you want. It's not the same, but still lots of fun. Coaching, beer league, whatever. It's not the end of the world when it ends. Just sad. I am a little sad. ?

No offense Danner, but my family is doing this right now, and I still say, not being able to get into the school and the expense are more influential on Western Pa kids leaving the area than not getting on the local club hockey team. We parents compare notes. Pitt is a bigish school with one club team. Hard to get into the school, hard to get on the team. Duquesne is crazy expensive. Pitt, PSU, RMU...they are expensive imho. RMU was most generous with merit offer for us, but wasn't a good fit for what my kid wanted to study. To my knowledge, Miami University doesn't recruit for their club teams. Or maybe that was just my kid. ? Ohio, they want you to have some sort of hockey experience outside of youth/high school, even for their club teams, but who knows, maybe if you are good enough you could walk on during try outs. Kent tells you the same thing but they have kids rostered that came straight from high school. Depends on how good the kid is and who came out, I bet. The ACHA is all over the place. Bowling Green has a club team that is coached by the players. It really depends on the school. Adrian College loves their hockey and it is tough as hell to be rostered on their club three team. They recruit. But the school itself is....not so good academically. You have to research and be creative in your research, because it is hard to find information. Everyone's needs are going to be different. My kid wants to play club. He reached out to coaches of schools he was interested in. Even at the club level, if you want to play, it's a good idea to get on their radar. It's hard to pick a team just based on a tryout, I think. The coaches are all over the place in how they respond. Everything from, cool, come out to a practice and skate with the team, to....here's the dates for our prospect skates...to...see you in August for tryouts. I don't know that this is politics or....life. Kind of like getting a job. Is it crazy to do this for club? Well, yeah. But it happens in youth travel hockey all the time, too. For anyone interested, once my kid figured out what he wanted to study, we looked for schools known for those programs that have club hockey and went from there. Looked at rosters and Elite Prospects, whatever that website is, to try and see where kids played before getting on the team. It gives you a good idea if your kid has a chance and will fit with the program. Ohio University's rosters are littered with AAA kids and kids that played juniors, for instance. Then if it was a fit, he applied to the school and got in. Then reached out to coaches to gauge interest. And I keep telling my kid....you might not make the team. You might get hurt. You might decide playing is too much. Will you be happy at this school if hockey doesn't happen? Because at the end of the day, it's about getting a job after getting that degree. And no one is giving you money to play club hockey. You either qualify for merit money based on need or scholastics or you are paying. If you want scholarship money....grades grades grades. High SAT or ACT. Rigorous courses if you want in a popular degree at PSU Main or Pitt. You need those things before even worrying about the club hockey team. Oh...and ask when practices are. It's beer league times or 6 am practices now with most club programs. When you try to balance that with studies...I know that was a deal breaker for some kids.

Actually, Danner, I doubt the kids who would play ACHA club hockey are leaving the area specifically to go to another school to play club hockey somewhere else. Pitt, Duquesne and PSU are very expensive to go to and good out of state schools are frequently cheaper. Ohio has so many schools, for instance. Plus Pitt and PSU Main have become super hard to get into. It's actually pretty terrible that a good Pa student with decent SAT scores can expect that it will still be hard to get into the big Pa schools. I would submit that decisions are being made more based on those reasons than wanting to play club hockey at Pitt/Duquesne and not being able to based on politics. That doesn't really make sense, actually.

To be fair, I can't find where Danner said that in connection with Duquesne. I do remember a thread somewhere on this forum where those criticisms were leveled against Pitt.

Only on paper. If you were following along all season, you know that any team in PIHL this year can lose on any night. USC has been hot and Pine turned their season around beginning in October.

I saw that. Trying to capture kids who quit the sport?

Nope. But there should be some hitting. I would be ok eliminating checking entirely from the game, but it isn't, so it should happen at the right time. The fact that it happened not at all is a bit problematic to me. But go ahead, insult me.

They usually use their kids to do it. But it's clear who put them up to it.

Flipping between the three 14u games and I haven't seen a hit laid yet. ?