Hello again my fellow Bantam AA victims,
Once again we have been summoned by our CAHA overlords to Norcal. What's that you say? Another Norcal adventure involving travel expenses, hotels, and loss of the traditional Labor day start of season tournaments that people enjoyed in prior decades?
And all this so that teams can "scrimmage" each other in < 50 minute running time format, and occasionally be evaluated in a secretive system involving coaches of various clubs which may or may not be highly biased, using unpublished pre jamboree rankings, along with subjective and undocumented criteria. If that doesn't get you excited, then you should probably also know that the evaluators may be watching 10 minutes of one or 2 of your games or not at all, assuming there aren't any major changes from prior years.
While I could certainly bash the actual format and execution of the Jamboree on its merits, before I digress, I have a far simpler criticism.
Why is the Jamboree once again in NorCal? As this is the 3rd year of the Flight system, why is it that we are being expected to once again report to NorCal when the SoCal teams outnumber the NorCal teams by a 4-1 or even 5-1 ratio?
Apparently nobody from CAHA stopped to think about the basic fairness involved in forcing 16 teams to bear the travel and housing costs for this charade, when the representation of teams is so incredibly unequal. Based on representation, one would expect to have to travel to Norcal once every 4 seasons of this system, but instead, we're forced back to Norcal again for the 2nd time in 3 seasons.
Let's get real. There is very little reason for the Jamboree that requires travel. Teams could play each other in pre-season games or scrimmages as was done in the old days and we'd get much the same level of evaluation and results. So when people decry the ongoing series of CAHA mandates as favorable to Norcal organizations, teams and rinks, it's harder and harder for even the most vociferous devil's advocate argument to be made to the contrary unless you have the deluded view that SoCal hockey needs NorCal.