GrumpyOldPucker

Yeah, but when a kid like that plays HS and really tries to put up huge numbers someone WILL BE butt-hurt and someone WILL be trying to run them dirty to take them out of the game. I've seen it too many times.... no wonder the really talented kids don't play HS.

Just list the teams alphabetically and have a search feature that will allow you to search for teams within a 5 point rating range.... If you are looking for competitive games then +/ 2.5 (or +5 from their own rank number for the masochists) should be good enough for most. Maybe advance search where you can pick multiple states or USAH districts. That will effectively accomplish what the rankings should really do for the younger ages (by this I mean anything U12 or below). If someone wants to do the work to scrape all the data and sort it by rating they can have at it..

I posted this in the girls section but it deserves general acknowledgement. The SCS U19 girls just defeated Arizona 1-0 in OT to take the National championship! Great job ladies!

Just got word that the U19 Steel City Selects defeated Arizona 1-0 in OT! Congratulations and great job ladies!

You are talking about increasing your staffing cost by ~40-50% assuming that you are adding one zebara on ice each game and putting an evaluator on for maybe 30% of the scheduled games. Plus, you gotta believe that the fee to schedule will go up when you add one or two more bodies per game. Yes you need to secure the funding for the staffing increase that you want but that's the easy part. of the issue. The issue is a whole lot bigger that just upping the dues a few hundred dollars. The problem is that you cannot throw money at a staffing issue... Even if you can find the bodies to put on the ice you still need to train them which takes time, games skated and mistakes made and learned from. And, you still don't have enough people to actually do the training (evaluating) at the level that you want.... We are not even mentioning the negative hostile work environment that needs to be overcome.

Hap - I doubt that you are or ever were an official. How do you know how frequently evals occur? If the evaluators are doing their job nobody but the officials will ever know they are in the building and I can assure that that they do happen. It would be nice to see them happen more frequently but that is very difficult to make happen. If you think there is a shortage of officials then you should think about the qualifications needed to evaluate and supervise and look at that pool. The evaluator needs to be experienced, respected by the officials being evaluated, be able to both teach and chastise in a positive manner that will be accepted and assimilated by the officials. So you want to take the better\best active officials out of your pool of skaters to go watch games and evaluate... sure you do..... but those officials can make a hell of a lot more money skating than watching so why would they give up hundreds of dollars skating to watch other officials make those dollars...... These guys are already out there 4-6 nights a week, you want them out all 7 days of the week? You must be a divorce lawyer. If you want more evals then you gotta convince better retired officials (who got out because they were burnt out and are enjoying not being at a rink all the time) to get back into the mix. Are you ready to pay for them? Assuming that the game fees for officials have gone up over the last few years then the total cost per varsity game for officials is conservatively $250+ to cover the two officials game fees and the scheduling fee. If you want me to do an eval I can guarantee that I'm not doing it for less than ~$80 per official per game.... and I'm probably low-balling myself as my time and experience are worth a lot more than that..... don't forget that I'm doing it to make money so whatever I get paid has to cover the IRS mileage rate for my round trip and still pay me enough to be worth my time to even be considered (my personal standard for accepting any assignment - screw this volunteer crap PAY ME NOW cuz that's the way the world works now). To put that mileage thing in perspective, think about the mileage that one would rack up traveling to Wheeling, Morgantown, Erie, or State College if you are geographically centered between them.... SO you are talking over 100 miles round trip As for sanctions on officials that some of you are calling for, what would satisfy you - How about we draw, quarter, and hang the body parts at the four corners of your kingdom? And just what make you think that any sanction would ever me made public without the involvement of a bunch of lawyers? There have been officials suspended for weeks, months, even entire seasons. You just never hear about it.

Ashley Veschi played at RMU - coached PPE, not sure where she is now or if she does private lessons Kate (Michaels) Binnie was captain of her D1 school, coached PPE, not sure where she is now or if she does private lessons Kaley Mooney now U14 girls head coach PPE played and coached at Miami as well as coaching U18 and U20 boys in Sweden not sure if she does private lessons

Sort of..... I would agree that playing at a high level would necessarily give someone exposure to connections to get considered for "upper tier" coaching positions... regardless of whether they have a clue how to teach. (Beyond a certain point you simply cannot get into that club without the secret handshake) Just because they had the skills to play at a high level does not mean that they can teach those same skills to others. I have seen way too many former high level players that completely fail as teachers - all their lives that just did it, they never really thought about how they did it. SPECIFICALLY AS SKATING COACHES..... if you ask them to break down the stride, weight transfer and edge control, how to do it, as well as what game situations certain edge techniques might be good and well.... yeah - no bueno..... Yes a lot of kids are visual learners, but you still need to know how to break down their technique to fix the bad habits and poor technique that they ingrained through all of their "visual learning"..... having played at a high level does noting to instill this in someone. It depends on their personality, how they were taught, and even to some extent whether they were naturally gifted or had to work on it to get a good stride. We do agree that to teach skating you DO need to be able to demonstrate the technique - THAT does not require that you have played at a high level.... Just that you have good technique. I think that you would agree that here is sooo much more to teaching skating and especially power skating techniques than just demonstration. Go watch a coach teach.... you should be able to determine if they are any good and whether their way of communicating meshes with how your kid learns.

because if you haven't played at the highest levels you simply cannot know what you are talking about. ???

Saucey, this one is simple.... if they wanna declare AA so be it. Remove the running clock rule and allow them to be pummeled like baby seals. Also, add rules wording specific to AA that any game that reaches 15 penalties will be reviewed in it's entirety for supplemental discipline..... those scrums where a players get away with several punches.... give them a game suspension and tack one on for the coach.... That high hit or dangerous borderline hit that wasn't called... well now it gets automatically reviewed..... Now whether PAHL has the cojones (or member support) to do something like this.... Well it IS their team.... LOL. They are being paid and only have to answer to whatever board is writing their check..... It's a fallacy to think that the parents run any of those orgs..... well, maybe a couple of well heeled influential parents have influence, but the rest of them have the option to write their check and shut up or just go away.

AAANND THE SCHOOL NOT ONLY RECOGNIZES THE TEAM BUT FULLY SUPPORTS IT FINANCIALLY!

Reach out to the college coaches, but know that they don't personally recruit heavily once their season starts. They "may" send someone out to scout on their behalf. Let the coaches know when the kid is playing and where. They usually scout some of the bigger tournaments - cast a wider net kinda thing. Do not expect them to come out just to see your kid unless they're legitimately the next great hotness. HAVE YOUR COACH POLITIC\NETWORK FOR YOUR KID WITH THE COLLEGES. Put together a bio and some film - not just pretty goals... show that the kid can skate, pass, shoot, playmake, play defensively, is physical and aggressive both on and away from the puck, has hockey sense, is a good team player. In the BIO emphasize the academics. If the kid can maintain a 4.0+ GPA and play travel hockey that goes a long way to show they are dedicated, mature, and know how to manage time and priorities. Oh, and IMHO NSCA and Captain U are bigger money grabs than most anything we debate on here.

I personally feel that the boat has been missed. It sailed long ago and sunk in a storm. In the late 1990's and early 2000's there were over 125 programs that had varsity teams, most also had JV and Freshman teams. When the leagues unified as the PIHL it should have been under the auspices of either PIAA or NFHS..... not a local stand alone league (but that was as much a control issue as anything. They also should have got together with the PAHL and found a way to make a split season work. Regarding the money side - In 1995 the program I was involved with had all 3 teams and practiced 3 days a week (6 hours of ice divided between the 3 teams, some joint practices, some split ice, some full ice), with paid coaches. The school donated $5000 to the program and the budget for the year was north of $130k. There is no way most Western PA School boards are gonna fund a sport (in todays dollars) to the tune of $200K+ A YEAR! And no way they are gonna fund a school district owned rink......

Nope!

Let's be clear - I AM NOT CONDONING the boorish behavior that started this thread but "non-participants" have interjected themselves since the first athletic competition in human history. We all agree that they went way over the line and it is happening more and more frequently. To be perfectly honest, the on ice officials really should not be involving themselves - at all - with spectators. There should be security on site that handles any spectator issues. Since the officials have authority over the (actual) game, "people" seem to expect them to "do something" to make stop whatever behavior is offending them whether it's actually their responsibility or not. Trust me, the officials would like nothing better than to just concentrate on calling the game. That said, I recall that the PIHL had wording in their league rules specifically giving the on ice officials the "power" to do whatever is needed to maintain control of a game including stopping\suspending play. I do not know if this wording is still in place. My rant was solely directed and the constant ref bashing that goes on by know-it-alls that HAVE NOT, CANNOT and WILL NOT ever attempt to do the job. I will reiterate..... What will all of you do when nobody will put on the stripes anymore?

I do have a comment to every one of you wanna-be supervisors bitching about the officials.... // Rant Mode ON LACE 'EM UP AND GET OUT THERE AND PROVE THAT YOU CAN DO BETTER! NO EXCUSES LIKE "I CAN"T SKATE OR I WOULD"! PUT UP OR STFU ALREADY! I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MANY PROMISING YOUNG OFFICIALS I HAVE SEEN QUIT OVER THE LAST 30 YEARS BECAUSE OF YAHOOS LIKE YOU! I GUARANTEE THAT IT IS A WHOLE LOT EASIER TO SEE THE PLAY FROM THE TOP ROW THAN IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. THE DIFFERENCE IS LIKE WATCHING VIDEO IN SUPER SLOW MO ON A 60" SCREEN VS WATCHING ON FAST FORWARD THROUGH A FISHEY LENS. EVEN STANDING AGAINST THE GLASS IN THE CORNER IS VERY, VERY DIFFERENT THAN BEING PART OF THE PLAY. //Rant mode OFF

Boorish fan behavior - especially from student groups - has been an issue off and on going back 40+ years to the days of the early days of the three separate HS leagues in Western PA (South Hills, West Penn, & Lake Shore) 1 - Isn't this the PIHL League Reps responsibility to deal with? This incident really needs to be dealt with at the school district\league level. I thought that the PIHL required security to be present at all games? 2 - If I were skating the game I would have the league rep have the security\constable speak to the offending group. I would note the time of this discussion with a brief description on the score sheet and follow up with a supplemental incident report. The two guys skating this game are very senior officials with probably 25-30 years in the stripes. I didn't hear any threats made from the stands, so at what point does it it rise to a level that intervention from the on ice officials is warranted? It's an age old discussion if\when\and how the officials should react\address fan behavior. Over the years, the consensus is that there are no right way for an official to deal with this stuff, only wrong ways.... Their job responsibility does not extend to crowd\fan control but it has been forced upon them at some levels due to lack of rink security. 3- IF (as an official) I were to take it upon myself to eject this group of fans (and obviously I have done this a few times over the years) I might want to consider whether I would need a police escort to leave the facility\area. This is even more of a concern now than it was even just 10 years ago. There are a few rinks that have the local police serving as security..... an ejection might just result in a disorderly conduct citation and a fine or possibly an arrest. 4- If I were the coach, I fell that I have two options: A) take my time out to settle the team and remind them them that, contrary to current popular belief, words only hurt you if you let them.. (I know that's easier said then done when you are dealing with kids). Have the team focus on winning the game, that the fans are doing it to try to get them thinking about their insults rather than the game. Then push the issue with the to the league afterwards, possibly report it to my own AD and what they have to say. B) confirm that I had the incident on video, request that the league rep and officials take measures to control the vulgar behavior. If it continued or they refused then I would take the Match penalty to force a league hearing on the issue.

Well I guess I can unfollow this thread now... All useful info has been presented and the pie fight is about to start. LOL

I had an out of state friends ask me tonight about using live barn to try to watch a kid that's supposed to be playing at Alpha......Maybe it's gonna open up as the season progresses and more games are played,

Hmm interesting..... ACHA teams restrict the broadcasts but real legit D3 schools live stream their games for free through the school websites...... Big F'ng ROTFLMAFO salute Pittsburgh.

So what's up with all of the privacy codes for about 50% of the live barn Alpha ice broadcasts? Not wanting to start a pie fight about this, just curious. Any info is appreciated.

Didn't the PAHL or PIHL have something like this a while back? I seem to remember someone wanting the coaches or team managers to ID the loud mouths and report them to the league.... There was a lot of "I dunno who that is".....

This was years before live barn, maybe 15 or more years ago.

I dunno, but a wise man once said, "Follow the money"! cuz it's not about providing opportunities for the youth.

IIRC Rosters are not set for national bound teams until December 31. If the parents want to eat whatever costs are associated with jumping teams so be it... The players, parents, and coaches from the team you left might see it differently and hold it against you..... even if they would jump at the same offer.... Nothing new to see here, move along...... Or pass the popcorn,