Len, or others with knowledge -

what happened to the placement grid that shows no Findlay Bantam teams??? thought the program would have enough for 2 teams?

are they playing in another league, or just a type on the placement grid?

They were concerned with the potential travel distances and decided to play in Little Caesars. Most of the Findlay teams are playing there this year.

somebody didn't think that one through. It looks good on paper, until you realize that you are making that trip for 'one' game, not a bundle of two to four, and that game very well could be on a thursday night, at Allen Park!

First, understand that my personal preference was to play in the Buckeye. I think that the new format provides greater opportunity for placement. (Under the old Buckeye rules Findlay was small enough to place its first team at the A level. So two years ago the #1 Peewee team played (a core of 12 - 93's with several 94's) at the A level and won 25 of 27 league games and was never seriously challenged. The next year the 93 core of that team (with several 92's) played their first year in Bantam at the AA level and won 6 of 23 league games. (Although games were close. GF was around 1.7 and GA was around 3.3 - in fact in the first round of the league tournament they lost to the #1 seed by one goal in a shootout) In my opinion the best Findlay team was somewhere between the best Buckeye AA teams (who have the ability to pick from perhaps a hundred players) the best Buckeye A teams (either a city's second or third best team or a small city's best/only team). Reality is that Findlay barely has enough players to make two full teams and it is a matter of dividing up those 30-35 kids. That makes it difficuly competing against the team that can pick and choose from many players.

Having said that (and again understanding that my preference was to play Buckeye under the new format) unless Bowling Green or a Sylvania team played Buckeye the only other "northern" team(s) were Fort Wayne teams (90 miles). Every game was a minimum drive of 1 1/2 hours and a maximum drive of 4-5 hours with several drives in the 3-4 hour range. If games are stacked (4 games in a weekend against 2 teams) to minimize the number of trips, hotel costs and meals costs increase.

LCAHL has advantages and disadvantages. Playing in a geographic LC division most games will be less than 2 hours away with games probably in Bowling Green (20 minutes) Sylvania (45 minutes) Toledo (45 minutes) Monroe (70 minutes). Understand that downtown Detroit is less than 2 hours from Findlay. I understand the argument that two Thursday night games at Allen park - 90 minutes (95 miles in I75) away is preferable one double header on a Sunday 206 miles away in Indianapolis (or back to back doubleheaders against 2 Indianpolis teams).

For me the major issue with LC is the requirement that one team will be all the 93's and one team will be all the 94's. (There apparantly are enough to field both age level teams) In my opinion, and some will disagree, this does not permit Findlay to field a team of its best Bantam players on a #1 team.

As to level of competition, I don't know. Recently, these players (93's) were at their best dominating in Buckeye (2005-06 PeeWee A) and at their worst competitive in Buckeye (2006-2007 Bantam AA). The last time my son played in LC was in Mites when they went .500 in the regular season and .500 in the first round of the playoffs. Since then other that the Bowling Green teams, Sylvania teams and the occassional Fort Wayne team, he has played few LC teams. I do know that other Findlay teams have had difficulty in winning in LC over the past few years.

I wish all the Buckeye teams I have watched play over the past several years the best of luck this year and would hope I get a chance to watch some of them play this year. (I assume that Findlay will host the annual Thanksgiving weekend travel tournament and I invite Findlay's historic Buckeye opponents to come and play).

Who do I contact to schedule scrimmages with both of the Findlay teams?