after successfully wrecking midget hockey in cali, the caha braintrust is now working on bantam. peewees next.
You have it all wrong. CAHA is focused on finding a way to reduce the oversubscription of california hockey programs wherever they may be, in much the same way that the great Ebeneezer Scrooge suggested certain people should die and decrease the surplus population. Once enough kids have fled the California youth hockey scene, there will be more than enough open roster spots, so that all californians can enjoy the perfection of a system where every game ends in a tie borne of penultimate competitive equality.
In the perfect future, all California AAA teams will boast rosters anointed as future NTDP shoe-ins at 10u, and will never leave the top 5 national rankings, as it was in the olden days of California hockey supremacy. Those who are not satisfied with their assigned place, will be free to seek out stick time on their way to beer league valhalla.
The problem is the
suckers unsophisticated letter chasing parents who just continue to fail to understand how damaging it is when your son or daughter plays on a team that loses. It's not CAHA's fault that you don't understand that if your kid was actually good at hockey, they would be on a team that always WINS. CAHA knows in advance which teams will win and which will lose, so there is really no reason to waste time playing games when we all know the outcome of the season weeks before tryouts even occur. You are all wasting time and resources that could be better spent by the really good kids kicking ass in Phoenix or Dallas.
Far too many people seem to think that just because they PAY for their kids to play hockey, that means they might want some choice as to what club or coach appeals to them or even just wanting to play for a team that is a practicality for their location. This is all wrong headed thinking. All kids peak at 10u. If your kid isn't dominating 12 year olds by that age, then face the facts -- they will never be good. Stay in your lane. Stop joining teams that lose games to other teams that might be better.
Until such time, as all of you idiots keep wanting choice in the marketplace of california youth hockey, CAHA will have no choice but to continue to come up with new and increasingly outlandish systems to punish LOSING HOCKEY and decrease competition accordingly. Sure this year, they may just unilaterally dump teams from AA to A, but clearly this is a half measure. After all, Tier 2 isn't a path to Tier 1, or a pragmatic alternative to Tier 1, despite what some of you may mistakenly think it to be, but it in actuality really only exists because some idiot hit the "I" key twice, many years ago, fat fingered the copy and paste into the CAHA rule book, and published the rules before anyone noticed that somewhere between sixteen and twenty teams had formed. Since they're now stuck with it, you can't blame the CAHA board from trying to have some fun and experiment on kids.
I did manage to get a transcript from the latest CAHA board meeting, and I thought this discussion was interesting:
"Why do we have so many shitty AA teams, I mean, C'mon? Can't we do something about this travesty?"
"I have a thought. Perhaps demoting a team to A isn't enough. Just spit balling here, but what if we came up with a more meaningful -- I don't know, punishment doesn't really capture it, I mean this is youth hockey and the eyes of the world are upon us here..."
"I think we all know where this is going, and it can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned."
"People we discussed this at the last six meetings, and we keep getting stuck on the details of who exactly is going to pay for the branding and maintenance of the branding equipment, as well as the specific terminology to be used."
"But I thought we agreed that 'Losers' was vague and just to open to interpretation, and for that reason, the brand should say 'BAD AT HOCKEY'"
Now I know this might be a concern to you Bantam parents, and perhaps even outrageous that AA demotion might also involve a painful permanent branding of your child, but you can rest easy knowing that this discussion only pertains to how the Bantam system could be adapted to work at the U12 level.