quote:

Originally posted by zamboni:
what happened to the squirt level?

i thought the whole idea of the pre-seed tournament was to put teams together based on strength ie.(AA,A,A1,A2).

if you look at the latest brackets, they have scrapped the lower divisions and have gone back to the old format(AA & A).

If your one of the weaker teams, you can't be real happy about this.

I think your going to see divisions at the end of the season with teams that go (1-23),(2-22)with stats like (24 goals for and 178 goals against) and others that go (22-2) with (190 goals for and 21 goals against)

quote:

Originally posted by Sandy:

quote:

Originally posted by zamboni:
what happened to the squirt level?

i thought the whole idea of the pre-seed tournament was to put teams together based on strength ie.(AA,A,A1,A2).

if you look at the latest brackets, they have scrapped the lower divisions and have gone back to the old format(AA & A).

If your one of the weaker teams, you can't be real happy about this.

I think your going to see divisions at the end of the season with teams that go (1-23),(2-22)with stats like (24 goals for and 178 goals against) and others that go (22-2) with (190 goals for and 21 goals against)

I can imagine some of the Squirts aren't real pleased and I'm surprised at the way the Peewee divisions came out too.

I'm not sure I understand the rationale at all, it looks like they said that every Peewee A team in the Hoosier region is a stronger team than all the Peewee A teams in the Bluegrass region. So we got Hoosier Peewee A, Bluegrass Peewee A1 (which is really B?), and then there's the A2? Is that like C?

We appealed our placement (in the Peewee A2) since we have the same 10 kids from last year's Squirt A plus 10 new (some house select players and some travel 2nd year Peewees) but it was denied with no reason given. Last year we went 17-3-1 league (34-14-2 overall) with just TEN regular skaters. Some actually accused us of sandbagging, guess they can't do that this year since we went to the pre-season tourny as A and expected to get placed as A. We also have a Peewee AA team that was first picked, but that doesn't mean those that didn't make the AA are 3 levels lower, just the opposite. 3 or 4 of them easily could have been on the AA, there just wasn't room. They have 17 already and these kids are too good to ride the bench. By going on the A they were certain to get ice time. Now what, they're going to beat up on everybody and bring home a trophy that means nothing. No fun, and puts them at a disadvantage next year when they expect to go AA.

The seeding tournament went smoothly, organized and on schedule. But from my perspective, it didn't accomplish the goals. I don't think anyone can get a good idea of how a team is going to perform during the season when they've only had 3 practices together and never played a game. Even though we lost 3 games they were all very close, and we were missing two of our 2nd years for the tourny (which they knew). So I don't see how we got evaluated as A2. The appearance is that they were trying to get 6 teams in each division regardless of ability and minimize travel distances (though I see Indy Silver dropped out of A2 already leaving only 5 in our division). I would rather have seen Hoosier A and Bluegrass A and an A1 group and we should be in Bluegrass A, pretty much like last year.

quote:

Originally posted by DuluthCrazy:
It looks like the Pee Wee division was set up using the RPI only and your not happy.

quote:

Do you think the other teams you played against have had more practices? Do you think other teams had all of their players?

A team losing 3 games out of 4 is not even half of the RPI rating. Remember, it also takes into account those teams and what they did, and so on.

quote:

The placement was in your kids teams control.

quote:

Originally posted by JoshE6798:
Indy Bronze's home rink is The Arctic Zone in Westfield, Indiana. However, we are going to be playing at The Forum in Fishers, Pan-Am World Skating Academy that is downtown, and The Pepsi Coliseum. Basically we don't have a home rink. LOL.

I certainly don't know how we ended up in the same division as the teams people thought might be AA, and we are definitely not going to complain about it, but I can only hope that the league knows what they were doing. LOL. I didn't get the luxury of seeing any of these teams play, so I have no idea what our kids should expect. Obviously our kids played well enough the league thought we could compete. We honestly thought we might be a strong A1 team, or a weak A team. I guess that is why the games are played, and I can't wait. I absolutely enjoy seeing our kids develop from week to week and year to year. It is amazing!

quote:

Originally posted by Sandy:
re: Peewee A/A1/A2 divisions:

Duluth, I think you mistook my search for information as griping. This is a new approach for the Buckeye and its bound to experience some shortcomings. Any organization should welcome feedback in an effort to improve the process.



No way to know if this is true or not since they didn't publish any of the results. If you know something I don't, please, share it with the rest of us. But in the absence of evidence, it does not look that way to me so no, I'm not happy.


I have no idea how much practice any of the other teams had or how they did in their other games. The league asked us to specify if we were missing anyone who might be a factor and we did, I would expect the other teams complied as well. I do know that our games were very close in score as well as apparent ability. Our 2-1 and 3-2 losses were more about luck than skill. This in not an insult to the other teams or a boast about ours, just my observation of those particular games. One of our losses was well deserved and our win was decisive, but those two middle games easily could have gone our way in a full length game. I was there, no "flames" please.

If the RPI is only about scores, why did they need evaluators there? Are you saying there were no judgement calls in any of this? That would be news to me.

I know our team, and I know that last year (with 1/2 as many players) when we played them non-league, we had scores like 15-1 against the same teams they have grouped us with now. I don't think the kids learn anything from such lopsided games and I'd be shocked if anyone disagreed with me on that.

We were looking forward to being in the middle this year, some wins to keep morale up, some losses to find ways to improve. Don't get me wrong, our winning season last year was hard fought for, especially with only 10 regular skaters, and we enjoyed every minute of it, but that's the way to do it, not by playing down.

We're trying very hard to grow our program. That's why 1/3 of our team is house players moving up to travel for the first time. They want to get better by playing with better and that's what the whole team wants to do in league at least 1/2 the time. Its frustrating to our efforts when we know what we're doing but basically get put back 2 grades just to balance some numbers. It really appears that we were put in A2 just because there wasn't room at the A level and because we come from a small organization in the Bluegrass region.

It also appears that there is a geographical bias with every single team in the Hoosier plus N.Ky (?) being labeled a stronger team than any of the Bluegrass teams. (The divisions are: A-Hoosier (all Hoosier area teams plus N.Ky), A1 (really B)-Bluegrass (all Bluegrass area teams), and A2 (really C) (except for Fort Wayne, is all Bluegrass area teams). So the only team from the Bluegrass region that is being allowed to compete at the A level is N. Ky. Everyone else is B or C. Huh?? If I read that wrong, someone please tell me what they really meant.

The whole point of this excersie was to take it out of our control and give the control to the league. If it was in our control, we would be an A team in the Bluegrass.

None of it really matters now, since its set in stone, for this year anyway. But if it goes the way I think it might, I reserve the right to wave it under someone's nose at the end so we can prevent a repeat next year. If we tank and don't come out at the top, I will respectfully endure an "I told you so".