St Joseph's Prep Hawks

It’s time for some major changes in Amateur and High School Hockey…maybe some people and organizations have outlived their usefulness? Many of you that follow Pa Hockey know that I have been pretty critical of the administration of the Villans and the philosophy of the OTHER Villans of Interscholastic Hockey, which is the AAA AND Junior B coaches who hold themselves to higher esteem to anyone else in the hockey community, who are FORMER high school coaches who couldn’t survive Interscholastic Hockey or found their egos satisfied by the extortion of young people through making them miss high school games and making them drink to vanted ‘Kool Aid’ and sign ‘Mr Haney’s’ contract. Now this may seem like harsh words or bitterness from someone who supports High School Hockey and ALL Hockey in this area , but this continuous ring in my ears about ALL of the Division 1 Scouts and Junior A Scouts at these tournaments is great exposure for our young people, if true, but I find it hard to believe that we have 6 AAA Midget Teams in this area and all of them are going to DIFFERENT tournaments and at these six DIFFERENT Tournaments, there are loads of NHL, NCAA Division 1 and Junior A Scouts at EVERY DIFFERENT tournament. In addition, this philosophy is now being sold to kids that are 9 and 10 years old by these organizations, not to help them secure a future hockey career, but to get their money into the organization to fund all of these out of town trips. And many of these players going to Junior B camps are being asked to fork out bigs bucks in exchange for a chance at ‘the Dream’. Supposed High School friendly organizations, namely the Junior B Penguins and North Hills Vipers, who say ‘yes….we support High School Hockey and we don’t want you to miss your high school games’ are talking out of both sides of their mouth and telling their players that the consequences are THAT THEY WILL SIT AT THEIR JUNIOR B OR MIDGET AAA games on the weekend, if they miss practice during the same times as High School game and tournaments. Now I have been and will be the first to admit, I have been very critical of the Hornets organization for their policies and contracts, but they encourage their players not to play high school and play one team, which I still don’t believe is the right thing, but it is not as hypocritical as the other choices. Especially given the amount of money families are bring asked to fork out to mortgage their children’s future. At the National Invitational Scholastic Showcase in November in Jamestown, I had an opportunity to meet and discuss Interscholastic and Amateur Hockey with people from places like New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Indiana and Eastern Pennsylvania and the overwhelming sentiment was that a National High School Tournament would be a great event and an overwhelming majority, if not all of the twelve teams will return to Jamestown on December 7-9, 2007. Maybe Bethel Park will have their Junior B players so they can better compete with Buffalo St Francis or Holy Ghost Prep will have their 4 midget AAA players or possibly Summit Christian Academy from West Palm Beach, Florida will have a full bench to compete with the best teams in the country. New York and Illinois have Split Seasons to allow their players to ENJOY both High School/Prep and Midget /Amateur Hockey. Locally, the Pa Hockey Scholastic Showcase in late December will have the best tournament field ever, but who knows what players will disappear under threats of duress from AMATEUR coaches, not just at the Midget level, but now at the Bantam and even Pee Wee levels because of some great whipped up tournament in Columbus or Harrisburg or Virginia or some other hockey scout hockey hotbed. Folks, the Pa Hockey Scholastic Showcase is now in its 11th year and is one of the premier events in the country and its fun and most importantly ITS LOCAL and an opportunity for these kids to play in front of their peers and families and showcase their talents. Plum’s R.J. Umberger played in it, as did Seton LaSalle’s JB Bittner, as did TJ’s John Zeiler, Seton LaSalle’s Louie Garritan, BP’s Denny Kirstein, Central’s Bernie Chmiel, Lebo’s Robbie Hammel, Peter’s Christian Minella, Indiana’s Casey Haines, Peter’s Matt Schwartz, Peter’s Chris and Matt Clackson, and many more who have gone onto Division 1 hockey. I was watching a division 1 game between Maine and Boston College the other night and the captain of Maine is 26 years old. So my question is why is this hockey community so in a hurry to push 13, 14 and 15 year olds in travel hockey instead of letting these kids mature and enjoy the process. The answer is the self-serving greed and egos of the coaches and the travel organizations! The result has been that the AA midget programs that were the backbone of the PAHL for many years and serve the majority of the high school programs in Western Pennsylvania has disappeared. Replaced by half baked AAA Midget Teams, that are AA teams with a handful of AAA players, the infrastructure of the development of hockey in this area in shambles. In addition, Developmental Hockey players in learn to skate programs are being pushed into Mite A and AA programs, leaving the Developmental In House programs bare to the bone with little or no players. I know this because I have been approached by several organizations already and my 7 year old is still learning the fundamentals of skating and hockey in Allegheny Hockey Association’s tremendous program. The by-Product of this at the Interscholastic level is the PIHL Open Division, which is a mix of Co-Op Impure Schools, Recreational hockey teams of players who have the money to play and afford the extortionist PIHL Billing system and schools who have stacked teams to play down from their Enrollment level to clobber bad teams and glorify themselves in a league that can only be known as the re-birth of ‘the South Penn League’, which was a league developed for schools that no one else wanted to play in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but was a great way of collecting USA Hockey Team Registration Fees and today is keeping the overpaid and under-qualified commissioner employed. People the answer to all of this is Split-Season, which Bethel Park’s Jim McVay is doing and to another extent has been done at North Allegheny and will be adopted very soon by other organizations locally. This is the first step and the second step is to pare down the number of AAA Midget [including Junior B] programs to 2 or 3. The third step is to start putting together some Developmental programs, like the Pa Hockey Developmental Clinics [we now are approaching 150 players in the Murrysville Dek Hockey Program built from scratch] to rebuild the infrastructure of the PAHL and the fourth and final step is to rebuild the PIHL with cooperation from the Amateur and Travel organizations to play on the weeknights on Monday through Thursday, while the Amateurs play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The other agreement will be to set the marquee High School Tournaments, such as the St Margaret’s Fall Face Off [October], Kittanning Invitational [October], Central Catholic Invitational [November], National Invitational Scholastic Showcase [early December], Pa Hockey Scholastic Showcase [after Christmas], Meadville Invitational and Bethel Park MLK [Presidents Day weekend] dates a year in advance to allow travel coaches the opportunity to NOT schedule their out of town tournaments at those times. Out of the 20 odd weeks of the hockey season, the Interscholastic Hockey community would only be asking for a half dozen weekends to play and promote these great events and more importantly the BEST players would be afforded the opportunity to play in these events and showcase their talents. And maybe, just maybe all of these Division 1 Scouts and Junior A Scouts at these tournaments would COME TO PITTSBURGH FOR THE FIRST TIME CAUSE LEGEND HAS IT NONE OF THEM HAVE EVER BEEN HERE. Before we think that every Division 1 program, Junior A program and NHL team is looking at OUR players, we ought to think about cleaning up our ENTIRE philosophy and infrastructure of hockey in this area and maybe get some coaches who really care About the players and the future of this sport who are now sitting on the sideline waiting for the smoke to clear. It’s time for some major changes in Amateur and High School Hockey…and MOST OF THEM HAVE outlived their usefulness in OUR Hockey Community!