Half-Ice for 10U

[goalie_dad]

Will USA Hockey push 10U to half ice next?

I can't imagine these 10U teams from Washington will complete with the 10U teams playing full ice.

http://www.admkids.com/news_article/show/761687

[6607]

So glad we are done with Squirts before it goes half ice!  There is plenty of time in practice for cross ice and small ice games, but arguing for half ice at squirts is just admitting that cross ice for mites did not prepare kids to become squirts. 

[Transplant]

When the rest of the Seattle area went to small-ice for 8U, Armstrong's association pulled out of the league for a year so their kids could play full ice.  For him to be pumping small ice for 10U is a real turnaround.

[HatTrickBros]

This year we have a team of all Mites (2008s) playing up in Squirt and they currently sit 7th out of 24 teams in SQB.  There is no way these kids should be playing cross-ice.

[Hackey11]

Half the 2nd place team was supposed to play mites!

[LookingForAnswers]

Well, the Western Washington teams are all on board with half ice.  The Eastern Washington teams don't want to go half ice.  The problem is that the Rep teams in the East are all A teams while the Seattle based teams are B.  The Seattle teams balance their rep teams rather than load up 1 team per association and have them compete as an A team.  Also, every year there's 1 rep team that dominates the other rep teams in Seattle so by going to half ice you create parity by limiting the skilled players space.  Anyway, what I've heard is that for the rep teams they'll play half ice for league games then schedule full ice games with Canadian teams.