The geniuses at CAHA strike again. I can't imagine a more convoluted and stupid system. Now we have AA and Aa.
My thoughts exactly. This has to be one of the most ill conceived plans imaginable.
I keep hearing that it's soooo important that the level of Tier competition be protected, as if someone is charging admission to the games. Funny however, that this same idea doesn't extend to AAA. I mean if level of competition is so important, and a team having a losing season is such a crime, then why does AA need to be singled out for this BS?
Let me see here, last season, in PWAAA minor there was an 0-10 team, and a 3-9 team in PWAAA major. How can CAHA let this travesty of uncompetitiveness continue!
With the exception of a particular club that has been oft discussed here, most clubs are doing the best they can not to place teams at a level in which they can't compete. And what defines a competitive season. Can you lose more games than win and still be competitive, or is it a requirement that in order to be considered competitive you have to have a winning season?
Why is CAHA so concerned with the general fact that every season in every division there will be a handful of teams that lose the majority of their games. But what about the lower divisions? Why is there no concern expressed that teams who might be marginal in their division could very well be world beaters in a lower division. How is everyone served, when a team that is somewhere below the median level of AA gets pushed down to A and starts beating teams routinely by 8+ goals? What rules will exist to insure competitiveness in those lower divisions, or does CAHA not concern itself with those problems because those teams are no longer playing a CAHA schedule?
Even the problem club dropped teams this season once it was clear they were going to struggle mightily. CAHA in their infinite wisdom goes and rejects SDIA's request to drop to AA. Where is the consistency?
How does giving one team a bye to a state championship semifinal, address the concern of keeping a high level of competition exactly? Will that be known as the GSE rule?
The world is not a perfect place. Sometimes a team punches above it's weight class, and CAHA should stop acting as if this is the most important problem in the world of Hockey. Every year there are going to be winning teams and losing teams in every division. With divisions of 16-18 teams, half or more will not make the playoffs.
Consider Scaha Squirt A 2016/2017 which only had 8 teams. They all made the playoffs, but ask the couple of teams at the bottom of the division how they felt losing week in and week out. Does that mean that youth hockey is only productive if your kids win most of their games and don't ever have to face a team that they are just too strong for?
Artificially forcing teams out of a division or segmenting them into smaller groups takes the power for these decisions out of the hands of the parents and the clubs, and makes what is already a stressful process, even more difficult. There seems to be this prevailing opinion that all parents are chasing letters, and that may be true for a small minority of parents, but the vast majority are balancing geographic realities, budgetary constraints, homework burdens and relationships with coaches and teammates. In general, the many parents I've met are just as concerned as to whether their kids will have a productive and competitive season as anyone at CAHA. What they don't have is a crystal ball.
Kids at this age group have been getting jerked around by rule changes enough. I have never heard of anything like what is being proposed anywhere else in the country, and California Hockey has a big enough job continuing to grow the sport and support its member clubs without making our kids Guinea pigs for yet another experimental foray into rule changes for a sport that has existed for over 100 years. You would think they would be more conservative, given the reversion of last season's PDR and CAHA weekend rules after only one season.
There is enough uncertainty awaiting them in the move to Bantam and beyond. If I had a Bantam aged Tier player, I'd be just as annoyed, considering the choices to be made at U16 and beyond.
