Saucey

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. ?

One year on one of my kid's teams, the coach for what I would totally consider a faux AAA team gave our goalie his card after we scrimmaged them. He said he was the only reason our team did well against them.? Good narrative, gotta tell yourself something, I guess. The crazies have no shame, and Snapchat is definitely a favorite recruiting tool. Our kid tore the card up and was like, why in the hell would I want to go play for that team? Too bad no one enforces recruitment rules around here.

I didn't take any offense. My kids get plenty of ice, but I know that isn't the case for everyone. And I agree, more could be done to use the ice creatively but I guess....once you reach a certain age and if the level of play isn't that high, you aren't going to have organizations be that concerned. Same with whoever you can find to coach those teams. It is more normal than not now to jump around. We didn't, but I feel like we are the weirdos now. Feels rare.

That's the thing, when you hit an age where you are only getting an ice touch or so a week (the programs we skate for assume you are playing high school) full ice is kind of important.

1/2 ice doesn't work as well when they get bigger. My kids hate them. Just don't feel like they get a good enough skate.

I don't understand the argument of....we tried to pull a fast one, PIHL didn't catch it, kid played all season, so thus, there should be no foul, either. I do understand....we thought we were good because we talked to someone in PIHL. But the lack of documentation to support that seems to be an issue. PIHL enforces roster violations. They do. And coaches looking for an edge look for them and report them. And guess what....your verbal conversation with an incorrect application of the rule is likely not going to override the rule. But the cop told me it was okay to run the red light... What do you really want people to do? These rules are in place because clearly, people trying to get kids on rosters has been a problem in the past. Shoot, my beer league even has these rules because people really value winning in our society, even when the event or game means.... nothing. The amount of rules professional leagues have regarding rosters is mind boggling. Every time there is a roster violation, kids are hurt. They don't set the roster, so it is always a nasty repercussion for them. That is a terrible reason not to enforce them, because then you essentially invalidate roster rules. It's also not fair to kids to not enforce them. This is exactly why the rules exist in the first place, to prevent unfairness in setting teams. In my experience, PIHL enforces roster violations. So you need to dot your Is and cross your Ts. If your program doesn't, made a mistake...it sucks. But it's the rule. WE want our kids to see that there are repercussions for rule violations, don't we?

Lawsuit? People have lost their ever loving minds. Judges don't want to be bothered with this kind of crap. Good luck, Montour.

Omg I couldn't read all of this, felt like I walked into the fourteen years old's locker room. ?

If the team formed is not the level advertised, maybe don't field it that way. I don't want to say don't try, particularly considering the continuing disaster of PPE, but for crying out loud, don't call yourself AAA when your team is largely made up of kids who couldn't crack AA. Place the kids right. Hockey is a moneyed sport with a lot of parents used to being able to buy their kids whatever they want. I have heard it. "I will spend whatever it takes because he/she wants it." But you can't buy natural athletic talent. "You want me to kill my kid's dream?" Um. Someone is going to at some point. Maybe if you had, they would have put their energy into something that is within their skill set, ever think of that? The stats of going D1 are out there and have been discussed here and naseum. The development of youth sports should not be focused on chasing something that is so rare to do. You essentially harm most children playing. There shouldn't be so many butt hurt options. Don't be fooled, most of these coaches know what they are getting.

I like Danner, too. I don't always agree with everything he says but hey, here's a weird thing, you can both like and dislike someone's various opinions. And, you know, it's an internet Board where people post anonymously, so you should....da da da....take it all with a giant grain of salt.