HockeyPRPro

New poster here. Was wondering if you all had recommendations for sites that list local hockey tournaments where I could find upcoming ones in the tri-state (PA/OH/WV) area more easily?

I haven't been able to find one (or even a couple) such "go-to" websites yet and thought maybe you more experienced hands might know of some. You have some individual ones listed here but I searched for a master list or something and came up dry. And out on the wider web I find a lot of tournament companies that list their events and that's it, or individual event sites, so everything's really piecemeal and tough to navigate. Web searches yield those similar results over and over. Right now all I've been doing is manually tracking tournaments down and logging them into a word doc, but that's obviously not efficient nor comprehensive. 

(I'm pretty new to youth hockey too, so that's why I'm such a novice on sites you probably know all about. I work in local minor league pr and media but haven't really ever delved into the local hockey scene until recently while looking to sponsor events or exhibit at them.) 

Thanks for any help you can give. 

Marianne Watkins is great. Several NHL teams have used her, as Columbus brought her in at one point too. But yet she takes youth students and works with youth clubs regularly. That's pretty much ideal. She comes from a figure skating background so you're getting totally skating-focused training. 

I typically think the best skating coaches are probably solely skating coaches, so no matter who you chose that's what I'd look for. (It's the way most pro and major teams tend to operate right? So clearly there must be something to it when you're talking about specialized, individual skill coaches like this.)

On 5/25/2019 at 10:38 AM, PuckHead7 said:

Is anyone really up to the challenge?  What does it mean to be in charge of a youth sports club?  Do volunteers board members do all that they can, putting 100% into their job?  Do parents of player do all that they can to support the club?  Blaming Midam isn’t the answer!  Yes, I disagree with the 25/75 (the rule should have stayed at 40%)..... but...

Maybe there’s a need to work a bit harder with recruitment??  My son graduated from an organization that only fielded a half full JV team and a half full MS team a few short seasons ago.  The current president and the board worked their asses off and now the organization has a fairly large Devo group, a Middle School team and a Varsity team.  The district is small!  There is no way they can field both a JV team and a Varsity team.  Point is, they worked their asses off to get the club into this wonderful position.  Growing the program from about 25 kids to about 45 now.  Their Devo group is their FUTURE.  Get them in now, keep them learning and happy and maybe they’ll play through 12th grade.

Absolutely, NC is lucky by their location and status (private/religious), they're in a pretty decent place to be able to do some recruiting. Right in the center of the hot Pittsburgh hockey-verse in the North near NA and PR. Several rinks close by. I'd be all over that if I were working with the NC program. 

If you can do some decent recruiting, with their in-house developed core, and maybe lure some good coaching personnel they could be consistently competitive in a handful of years. 

A little local self-promotion wouldn't hurt either. Sell the goal and program.