Carl Racki

School hockey is a blast for the kids. My kids play both and I still get together with the guys I played with almost thirty years ago. My oldest son did not want to play school hockey at first but now he has as much fun if not more playing with his friends from school. Sure it is expensive but if you play AAA school hockey or even AA at the Varsity level it is very competitive and fun. The divisions below that are a bit rough as they just don't have enough kids to field quality teams. It is expensive for the price but if these wanna be AAA teams didn't travel so much to play another bunch of wanna be AAA teams they would be able to put that money toward the school team. Two tournaments with travel and hotels typically will cost you about $1000 each. That is tourney fee, cost to drive, hotels and food to play what 8 or maybe 10 games total. Now that is a waste.

The number one problem with hockey is the cost. I know many kids that would love to play ice hockey. A lot start with dek hockey and roller hockey. They never move to ice hockey because it is so expensive. I also know parents who don't want their kids picking up a hockey stick because ice hockey is so expensive. The cost of the sport is the number one thing holding it back. It would be nice to see schools help with the costs to reduce them. Back in 2003 PIHL surveyed teams to see how much support they received from their school. Some schools received a ton and some nothing. It would be interesting to see or publish. Maybe put pressure on the schools through social media. Worked for the Mars/Armstrong incident. Like someone said on here, I would love to know what they spend on the other school sports. If you could get similar funding for hockey it would help A LOT!

The problem with fans addressing it is it can escalate things very quickly. I have seen it happen several times at hockey games over the years. Not trying to play the blame game but security has to handle this. That is why they are paid to be at these Pihl games. Hopefully it tightens up after this. If not, report it and reprimand security for doing nothing about it. I have been the guy in the past to step up and stop things but that is a very slippery road and can turn out very badly. Example: I saw a man pulling a lady by her hair down the sidewalk as I was driving by. I immediately pulled over jumped out of the car and ran down to the guy to stop it. As I did the police pulled in. The lady claimed the guy wasn't harming her and I was the problem. True story. If an adult goes over to tell the kids to stop and a 17yr old comes at the guy and a fight happens the adult will be in a world of legal trouble believe me. Sad but it is the America we live in. I am glad I stopped to help the lady and would do it every time but it could have also ended very badly for me. My point is security should be handling this. That is what they are paid to do. That is why they are there. If fans are doing it things can turn very ugly very fast. Security at the games has to be better. I know they are probably trying to let the students have some fun but this was CLEARLY crossed the line.

The blame fall mostly on security. Kids will do dumb things. That does not mean it is acceptable. That is way security is paid to be at highschool games. If the officials stopped the game Everytime kids at highschool games yell stupid things it would happen about every game. I go to several a year and see it about every time. If security is not going to handle it what the hell are they being paid for. Security should have be standing there and tossed the kids chanting it. That is where the blame lies.

My opinion is it is on the security person. That is what they are paid to do. I have seen security at the Belmont and numerous other places remove students over the years. That is the whole point of the PAYING for security. In PIHL games it is usually the student section that needs watched, warned, and ejected. Do your job. Let the refs ref, let the coaches coach, let the security handle unruly fans. Pretty simple or why are we even paying them to be there????

The team Vengeance played and had two shut outs against would be ranked about fifth in PAHL AA. That team is also 4 of the Vengeance 6 wins. The goalie they picked up is good but the team is a AA team with a few AAA players. If you are not ranked in the top 30-40 in USA all, you are not a AAA team in my opinion. Teams hate to play lower ranked teams because it usually hurts them in the ranking so they choose to play independent to try to look better.