People keep asking why the Bears don't go AAA. It's pretty simple really -- it's a huge headache if you don't have a franchise.
Unlike the franchised programs, you have to "prove" you can do it with a lot of documentation, and then there's that pesky rule requiring a club with a AAA team, to have 2 AA teams, which the Bears do not have, and are unlikely to ever have, given the fact that they decided to drop their Midget program a few seasons back.
It's possible that if the Bears were to go to CAHA and request advancement to AAA they would get approval, but there's not much upside for the club to engage in that, when they can still play the AAA teams who badly need local games to play against AA teams who can challenge them. The Bears can play AA or AAA as it suits them, and if AA gets stale, they can seek out higher level competition at tournaments.
This is the system that CAHA put into place: a few AAA programs with a small number of kids who will ever participate, and a bunch of red tape discouraging other teams from building up a program, or even recognizing that a particular team has a high concentration of talent and ability. CAHA's system will not grow the sport of hockey in California, but it doesn't seem that is the goal of these rules.
