I know this is the high school site but few drift over to the youth site.
Looking for feedback on what youth teams are doing in regard to restricted travel regarding covid.
Any help is appreciated.
youth hockey travel
Moderators: Mitch Hawker, east hockey, karl(east)
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InThePipes
- Posts: 1006
- Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:26 pm
Re: youth hockey travel
Our association is planning on no significant changes at this point, same district and tournament schedule approach as a typical year (generally 1 out of town tournament). Now, whether or not that will hold is probably anyone's guess.
Last edited by InThePipes on Fri Aug 07, 2020 6:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Wise Old Man
- Posts: 340
- Joined: Wed Dec 25, 2019 8:11 pm
Re: youth hockey travel
Elliot, to protect plausible deniability -- along with my possible identity 
-- I'm not going to identify my exact association. However, as I believe I've said before I'm involved with a fairly large northern association. We have yet to discuss any specifics regarding the upcoming season and, any potential limitations regarding specific travel or game counts at specific levels. Partly because we want to give ourselves a chance to make the best possible decisions with the absolute latest information. Both Covid-wise and number of players wise as we are assuming we may lose some of the more recreational players, along with a possible measurable reduction in brand new players at the Mite level. Both of which will affect numbers of teams.
As I've stated previously and, as I discussed last week with a member of MH's administrative staff, the greatest challenge to attempting any sort of normal game play season, especially with normal travel, will be what happens when a player from a team tests positive and he and his whole team have to sit out for 14 days. Also, let's say the player tests positive on Tuesday and his team played in a tourney the previous weekend against three other teams? From what the MDH has told me, all three of those teams, including their coaches, should also be self-quarantining for 14 days. Good luck maintaining any type of legitimate scheduling integrity.
Here's another thing to think about. Let's say an association's Pee Wee and Bantam tryouts start on Monday October 5th. The previous Friday at the local middle school, a random kid comes down with symptoms and tests positive. Well, let's say that the three best returning players from the previous season's Bantam A team who are pretty likely to make the Bantam AA team as 2nd year kids share at least one class with the infected student (in reality, it could be even many more hockey players but, we'll say it's only three). All three now have to quarantine for 14 days and the tryouts will have concluded 7 days after they can return to play. Now what do we do? There are SO MANY potential unforeseen circumstances that may need to be addressed which we probably haven't thought of yet that it's simply going to be extremely difficult to pull this off. There's a reason that most of NCAA Div. III has already chosen to delay their season start to Jan. 1 and, conference games only. It's also very likely that the Div. I level will go this route as well.
Finally, after MH told me they were planning on having a "normal" season with "normal" travel, I asked what was the basis for that decision? I was told that MH felt that if they were to announce they weren't going to have a "normal" season, then they had no doubt that a bunch of non-USA Hockey "AAA" teams would form and, either register with AAU or get their own private insurance. MH explained that since they know their safety protocols will likely be far better than those implemented by a bunch of independent teams, it would actually be better for the kids to do whatever they could to have a "normal" USA Hockey season, thus preventing the formation of those independent teams.
Here's my concern with that approach. The absolute worst-case scenario would be for even one player to come down with Covid and either get seriously ill and/or die. Yes, it's a very unlikely outcome. Although it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine exactly where any individual actually contracts the virus, for argument's sake, let's just say that it becomes pretty evident that the player got sick at an out of town tournament. Is MH REALLY WILLING to accept that risk? I don't think I would/will be. That's just my perspective but...interested to hear yours' and others' thoughts Elliott
-- I'm not going to identify my exact association. However, as I believe I've said before I'm involved with a fairly large northern association. We have yet to discuss any specifics regarding the upcoming season and, any potential limitations regarding specific travel or game counts at specific levels. Partly because we want to give ourselves a chance to make the best possible decisions with the absolute latest information. Both Covid-wise and number of players wise as we are assuming we may lose some of the more recreational players, along with a possible measurable reduction in brand new players at the Mite level. Both of which will affect numbers of teams. As I've stated previously and, as I discussed last week with a member of MH's administrative staff, the greatest challenge to attempting any sort of normal game play season, especially with normal travel, will be what happens when a player from a team tests positive and he and his whole team have to sit out for 14 days. Also, let's say the player tests positive on Tuesday and his team played in a tourney the previous weekend against three other teams? From what the MDH has told me, all three of those teams, including their coaches, should also be self-quarantining for 14 days. Good luck maintaining any type of legitimate scheduling integrity.
Here's another thing to think about. Let's say an association's Pee Wee and Bantam tryouts start on Monday October 5th. The previous Friday at the local middle school, a random kid comes down with symptoms and tests positive. Well, let's say that the three best returning players from the previous season's Bantam A team who are pretty likely to make the Bantam AA team as 2nd year kids share at least one class with the infected student (in reality, it could be even many more hockey players but, we'll say it's only three). All three now have to quarantine for 14 days and the tryouts will have concluded 7 days after they can return to play. Now what do we do? There are SO MANY potential unforeseen circumstances that may need to be addressed which we probably haven't thought of yet that it's simply going to be extremely difficult to pull this off. There's a reason that most of NCAA Div. III has already chosen to delay their season start to Jan. 1 and, conference games only. It's also very likely that the Div. I level will go this route as well.
Finally, after MH told me they were planning on having a "normal" season with "normal" travel, I asked what was the basis for that decision? I was told that MH felt that if they were to announce they weren't going to have a "normal" season, then they had no doubt that a bunch of non-USA Hockey "AAA" teams would form and, either register with AAU or get their own private insurance. MH explained that since they know their safety protocols will likely be far better than those implemented by a bunch of independent teams, it would actually be better for the kids to do whatever they could to have a "normal" USA Hockey season, thus preventing the formation of those independent teams.
Here's my concern with that approach. The absolute worst-case scenario would be for even one player to come down with Covid and either get seriously ill and/or die. Yes, it's a very unlikely outcome. Although it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine exactly where any individual actually contracts the virus, for argument's sake, let's just say that it becomes pretty evident that the player got sick at an out of town tournament. Is MH REALLY WILLING to accept that risk? I don't think I would/will be. That's just my perspective but...interested to hear yours' and others' thoughts Elliott