January Meeting:
Scott Allegrini reminded the board that at the SCAHA November meeting, the SCAHA board appointed him as the chair of a Competitive Advancement Committee whose mandate was to review the competitive levels of the SCAHA A/B teams and to come up with a proposal that would promote competitive advancement in the league. The committee members are; Ben Frank, Todd Thomasy, Scott Allegrini, Steve Yovetich and Dave Bigelow. Scott deferred to Dave Bigelow who presented the committee’s proposal. Dave Bigelow distributed a power point presentation to the board. Dave highlighted some lproblems that exist in our league.
Divisions and levels cluttered with teams at varying skill Competitive games are random
Pressure on clubs guessing where teams should play Matchups producing false positives and negatives Competitive hockey exists in pockets
Preseason too short for sorting out A/B
No consideration placed on geography
The goal is to try and build a competitive environment and structure so that teams can have competitive games relative to their opponents across the season. The overall goal is to grow the sport, keep the players playing from Mites to Midgets. The committee is proposing to create two divisions, with one division being state bound and the other division league bound only. Dave Bigelow distributed a chart showing the ranking and division of the teams that are state bound only. The table uses the “top†24 teams ranked into four-(4) pools of six-(6) teams each. Discussion followed. It was agreed upon that the non-state bound concept would be discarded. It was suggested the committee should revise the structure and use the same ranking/scheduling format as the chart presented but to apply it to A/BB/B pre-destined divisions and to have the league rank the teams into their appropriate division after the first 5-week play and then re-rank the teams after the 7- games played. The committee will regroup and re-present to the board at the next SCAHA board meeting.