Yup, leaving the state in droves.
Now let's talk about the Flight 2 playoffs. The problem last season is that the Flight2 playoffs were announced half way through the season. CAHA pulled the entire Flighting system out of their ass between AA tryouts and the jamboree -- Crappy planning and seat of the pants execution.
At PW (oops sorry, I mean U12!) it's the apex of socal youth hockey:. AAA(6), AA(16), A(22), BB(11), B(18) = 73 Teams! (Not including Norcal non tier)
With that said, by the end of the season, given that the Flight2 playoffs were an afterthought, there were some teams that were simply ready for the season to be over, and others that saw them as an opportunity to focus on an end season goal.
From what I've heard, this season, CAHA plans to do away with the Flight 2 playoffs. Bravo! God forbid that Flight2 teams should actually have a pre-arranged playoff to motivate them throughout the season. It seems to me, that CAHA is just lost. There are only a handful of Norcal teams in the divisions across age groups, and one of them is essentially a multi-club all star team that weakens all of its member clubs. I know that's an oversimplification, but it's more true than not. Last season 2 out of the 3 Flight2 divisions didn't have a single Norcal team in it.
CAHA exists in order to objectively sanction competition between teams throughout the state. When it did that, it had value, but then it got into the business of picking winners and losers, in a secretive process that is full of bias and politics. The supporters of the Flight system will claim how it kept the competition level high for the Flight1 teams, and I'm sorry to call bullshit on that, but it's nonsense. CAHA has no business enforcing "standards" when it sanctions AAA divisions that routinely have teams that get blown out by a 5+ goal avg. through the entire season.
Here's some scores for you:
7-0, 4-1, 10-2.
State championship 1st place team vs. 2nd place team. 2nd place team 0-3. OMG, how can this travesty of non-competitiveness be allowed to go on!
They force us all into an essentially meaningless jamboree on the weekend that used to be an opportunity for teams to start the season off with a tournament of their choice.
The message to teams that would for the most part clean up and face little competition in the A division, but are realistically not capable of contending with the top 4-5 teams in the division, is that they don't deserve the opportunity to face any Flight1 teams in games that mean anything, even though you will probably end up playing them a few times in meaningless SCAHA games.
What's guaranteed is that you won't play any of the Norcal teams due to the fact that there's only 3 of them anyways, and it doesn't matter that one or more might finish at the bottom of Flight2. So what does CAHA do again?
Now in year 3 of this revolving door of rule changes, lack of transparency, and head scratching reasoning, I can't understand what benefit CAHA provides to Socal teams other than to provide a hopelessly 2nd tier AAA franchise, and 1 or maybe 2 top 8 AA teams. In the flighting system, they have simply limited the top teams to playing a smaller pool of teams, which at the end of the day changes very little. Clubs see less variation. You play the same teams over and over until you are sick of them. In general, the better team wins more often than not, and "blowouts" still occur on the regular between teams at the top and bottom of the flights.
Last season, and again this season, the Bears have shown just how ridiculous and dysfunctional the CAHA system is. What a surprise that people are looking for an escape from the system. New trend this year? Bantam age kids, many who have played years of travel hockey opting to play High school JV! Yes, that's right, people thinking it would be better to put their 8th or 9th grader on the ice against kids they can literally skate rings around, with full checking that involves often unpredictable 15-18 year olds rather than have them continue in the california travel hockey system.
