Wes

Wrap yourself and kids in Bubble Wrap. Even safer yet!!

yes, the line above is my thought exactly...

not worried at all! Just finding all these immediate tryouts (other orgs have announced as well in basically the same timeframe) - funny. Technically there's never been a 3 month layoff from hockey, ever, and now BAM we have all these tryouts with little prep time for the kids. Reminds me of PIHL hockey tryouts that are held in the middle of summer LOL. but of course we know that most PIHL teams are pre-picked as well. Glad my kids are past the age of all this rubbish

Absolute farce! Nothing like having tryouts 3 months after the kids last skated with basically no warmup time. I'm sure those will be fair tryouts, um, yeah.

I will elaborate more on our situation later this year. The roster at our school has never been the best 20. It has been the FAVORITE (or friends and family) 20. If you aren't a favorite or friend of a favorite or don't kiss the boards A$$, you literally could be really good and not taken on the team. Therefore you have players on the team who aren't as good as some not on the team and that leads to other issues inside the school bordering on bullying etc. The players know that certain player(s) who are on the varsity team aren't as good as other player(s) who go to the school but aren't on the school's team for F & F / Political reasons. I call it political BS and thank GOD we're done with that all. I will NEVER stoop to that level of having to kiss A$$ for my kid to play on a team.

I would go as far as to say I hope they revise the hockey tourney and make it at least 4 games. The first game is always the toughest because the kids don't play competitively as a team beforehand and if you draw a good team as your first game, you're automatically looking at no higher than silver. The structure of 3 games no playoff is bad.

That sounds like some of the politics with a HS team in our town. School initials are "GL". Loads of double standards... some kids can miss practices for AAA and AA teams and get on the 1st line, others if they miss or late 1 practice for an AAA or AA team they're demoted to the 3rd/4th line. A lot of schools aren't in the business of putting the best 20 players on the ice, which is the problem with PIHL teams and lack of oversight as I mentioned before.

I don't like that it doesn't have playoff or a champ game either, but my kids have both had a great time playing in the event and the West 16u team took Silver last year which was a big accomplishment for them since the EAST team is usually stacked with AAA Flyers kids and basically no AAA kids from Western PA play on the West team. We were looking forward to it this year but oh well.

@ctil20 I too am a Republican and I don't go around here yelling at everyone as liberal or republican. I will go further that I base my decisions on FACTS & LOGIC and not on feelings, love or social justice. Wolf IS an idiot and a stooge and is strong arming counties with very small rates to be shutdown (Beaver) when there is really no logic behind it. Locking down a whole county when literally one building is the main problem is beyond rationale. Your anti-trump ranting is getting really old.

My bet is that the rates stay low and as things warm up the virus will continue to go away.

I don't like any league, hockey, softball, or whatever, that has zero oversight of what goes on with the teams in each league. In otherwords, as long as the players are USA Hockey registered (and don't carry suspensions), the league could give to $hits about the shenanigans that go on inside each high schools hockey organization. The PIHL doesn't require (to my knowledge, and yes I have years of experience), any involvement of the parent to the organization, in the case of the PIHL, the school districts themselves. I would go a step further and believe that the majority of school districts have no idea how their own PIHL teams are run. So why does this all matter? We have HS teams operating with the school logos, and the districts have no oversight about them. At least with the WPIAL (whom I also don't like) and the PIAA (for the most part I'm ok with), they have a lot of oversight and involvement with the school districts into the teams they field. PIHL=allows rogue operation of hockey teams. All the time you have the WPIAL ruling kids ineligible and then the PIAA overturns easily 66% or more of that because the WPIAL is like a State trying to override the Constitution (eg WPIAL rules do NOT override the PIAA rules in most cases). So this then comes back to why the PIHL is so damn adamant about trying to play finals games, when no other sport is trying to do this. What is the motivation here to try and do this when the players won't have touched ice in ~3 months at least by the time Wolf's lock down has ended. At the 10,000 foot view it would seem like a few power brokers are trying to push for this... when in order to actually pull it off would require breaking rules of the PIHL and USA Hockey. Why press on with this? Again no accountability to anyone. Hope that clarifies things LOL

I'd say this has about a 1% chance of happening. The fact that they're still discussing this is enough to justify cleaning house with their leadership.

Agreed, but why is there a brand new article in the Trib with the PIHL still hoping to play? Why, out of ALL sports, is the PIHL the one who thinks they can still pull this off?

@The King Agreed- so what the PIHL wants to do is rewrite (or suspend) their own bylaws about who is eligible to play, and usurp the USA Hockey rules in the same area, to play 1 game at each level?? Absolute stupidity. If the PIHL presses forward on this the whole PHIL board needs to be immediately replaced. Since when is 1 game more important than the integrity of the whole organization?

Posey is not a reputable person to say the least. Tells one person one thing and another person something totally different. Wastes a lot of time for parents. I would NEVER send my kid to be coached by him. But good luck to those who do.

Highly ridiculous given the memo PB posted with the death breakdown. I didn't see anywhere in there that kids 5-19 were being devastated by this virus.

Amen to this: I've seen a bunch of these AAA teams and WPA only have enough AAA players to field 2 teams. But 5 organizations and SSA (who has to resort to recruiting players outside of the region) and a ton of AA/AAA hybrid programs. So about 60 percent of these people are being sold a bill of goods, spending thousands for that extra A. Costing their kids an opportunity to enjoy their HS years instead of sitting in hotel rooms most weekends.

These issues will continue on forever until the school boards have oversight of the high school club sports. Club sports that operate under the school's logo and name ought to have some accountability to the district, instead of operating as rogue organizations. However, a number of hockey orgs themselves have power brokers in key positions (president...) and they call shots that aren't always to the benefit of the teams (or the overall org). We have discussed that issue on these boards for years.

100% accurate for Latrobe hockey as well. Lots of nepotism and favoritism.

Not really. I don't like that org at all. Wouldn't spend any $$ with them. To each their own.

Esmark will recruit (which is fine) and load up their team and then let kids go on 12/31 when replacing them with fresh bodies...

I agree with the statement above. I have tried before to get information on how to apply to be the midam registrar for WPA but heard back **crickets**. I have no idea who the people are that run the midam district but it certainly seems to be a closed club. Nobody's bio is posted and I have no idea what the qualifications are to even hold position at MA.

My guess is that we'll be hearing soon that the rest of the Pens cup and flyers cup playoff and PA state cup are cancelled. If they don't get them on by early April, it's pointless to wait beyond that since none of the players will have skated for weeks with all the rink closures and the rinks right now are closed indefinitely.

I have to agree that later tryouts may be a good thing to experience. I do agree that kids can change a lot in a few months and I also kind of like naming the team and starting practice a week later. I think that might reduce tryout hopscotch.

Wow oh wow that is a real shame these players won’t get to participate in this great tourney.