There is a WHOLE lot more to this system than Association size. I've been involved with this league from the very beginning and I can give you the entire history. (I'll try to summarize as much as possible).

What we have is a system that has evolved over the 9 year life of our league.

Year 1 - We had 29 teams and just one playing level.

Year 2 & 3 - We split teams into "A" and "AA" starting the 2nd year and for 2 years it was completely voluntary; teams simply entered the division they wanted to compete in.

Year 4 - We established a "guideline" of no more than 8 "2nd year" players and set up an approval process to grant "exceptions" to teams that felt they could not compete at a "AA" level.

Year 5 thru 8 - We adjusted the guideline to no more than 6 "2nd year" players and used the system for 4 years with no changes.

Year 9 (current season) - What we found over 5 years of attempting to evaluate and grant exceptions to teams is that we were very easily manipulated with "subjective" criteria and we were relying more and more on just the objective data.

Specifically:

1) How big is the player pool that the team is selecting from?

2) How far down the food chain is the team? (Is it the first team to select players? Second? Third? etc.)

With that in mind the current chart was compiled and the decision was made to eliminate all exceptions. I can tell you from my perspective it has been a complete and unqualified success. We had a few teams which were upset at the beginning of the year but the complaints during the season have virtually dried up.

For the most part what I have seen, it worked out fairly well this year. To me its always seemed strange that hockey teams tend to want to be classified at a lower level, where as in soccer my experience has been that teams try to get into the highest division possible. The question I have is what happens next year when the the teams that came out of the GCYHL lose their exemption to play in the B division, without regard to number of 2nd year players. One potential problem I see is a case like Cincy where there #2 team is all 1st year players, then the #3 team could be loaded with a strong group of 2nd year players and thus make it difficult on the small orginizations. Cincy hasn't made it an issue since they seem to split the 2nd year players fairly well between the 3rd and 4th teams, but the potential is there. You will never make everybody happy.

Interesting question. I have not really thought about this. So...I started looking around and still am not sure how this works. I am looking at a placement chart on the BTHL site and it basically categorized each association by size.

Small < 200, Medium 200-400, Large > 400

I know the Dayton Bombers has less than 200 players registered in our Mites-Midget programs. Therefore we are classified as a Small organization. Our Peewee team is playing at an 'A' level and we can not have more than 8 second year players.

Here is what I do not understand: I checked Cincinnati's association website, http://www.caha-cincy.org/, and by my calculations they are considered a Large organization. Yet, their first Peewee 'A' team has 8 second year players and their second team has 10 second year players vs. 4/8 as indicated on the placement chart.

I concerned because of the implications this would have on the potential Bombers/Gems/Bluehawks merger.

A 3rd team from Cincinnati would be allowed only 4 2nd year players in the "B" division. So I take exception to the term "loaded". Also keep in mind that the age of a player is only one of the criteria used.

The idea is that each team is selecting the best players available. By the time you get down to 3rd, 4th and 5th teams the level of play will be approaching that of good house teams.

The only thing that I see is Cincy has 4 'AA' Peewee level teams. Would this be considered teams 1,2,3 and 4? And the 'A' level be considered teams 5 and 6?

In response to Silver_Surfer.

The Cincinnati "A" team you refer to is the 3rd team selected, not 1st. They chose to place their 2nd team in the "AA" division even though it would have qualified to play "A".

When a team applies to the league they indicate their selection order at tryouts. Did they have 1st shot at the available PeeWees? Where they the 2nd team to select? Etc.