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Our association received a letter from Mn Hockey shunning a new program at Marshall HS in Duluth. Evidently they applied for the same status as SSM but were denied because they had to go to school their in order to play, according to the MH minutes. This seems like a wierd response to an aplication that is mirroring a program that's been in place for over a decade. They have a school, the players attend the school and they have their own rink as I understand it. Mn always struggles with 14's due to JV's appetite for numbers, so we sure would love the opportunity for more games. Why not let them scrimmage? Is MN Hockey losing its marbles, or are they so scared of AAA making inroads that they'll fight anything that doesn't fit it's idea of hockey for girls. Shame on them. Just let the kids play for cryin out loud, and start worrying about the real problems, like declining enrollment!!

northernstar wrote: Evidently they applied for the same status as SSM but were denied because they had to go to school their in order to play, according to the MH minutes.

This doesn't seem to make any sense. I understood that at SSM you have to be a SSM student to be on the hockey team, is Marshal different? I don't think that SSM has a U14 girls team I thought they do U16 and U18 so maybe that is the difference.

I think this may be similar to what some of the private schools in the cities have tried to do with Bantams in the past and I don't think that has ever really been welcomed. I think Blake had/has a Bantam B1 team and I have heard that St Thomas and Breck have considered youth teams in the past. I wonder if that is the floodgate that they are worried about more than Tier 1 with this. You might see private schools in the youth landscape starting at 6th grade rather than HS.

start worrying about the real problems, like declining enrollment!!

Declining enrollment is your problem. There is a youth hockey association in Duluth and they have girls teams. Make sure you assist the association with their girls recruiting this year, which is now, so future families don't face what these current families do because they didn't work hard enough on recruiting when their daughter was 6. When numbers are strong there isn't room for 14Us on JV.

The goal for Duluth Hockey girls recruiting is 30 new mite aged girls this year. Keep us posted regarding how close the association gets to their goal.

I don't know if Duluth is any different than our association or any other northern teams, but oung numbers are hard to come by. Ours is looking at the possibility of eliminating a 12 team this year in favor of a larger 14 team. DUluth has struggled so much they only have one high school girls team, and theres talk of combining the boys high school teams. They have a controversial coach for the girls that is forcing kids to look at other programs. Rumor was that she was going to be gone, but evidently that hasn'thappened. Even at the boys level they had one of their top players switch schools last year because his family wasn't happy. They "moved" into a aprtment in town and made there house there "cabin". Alot of good the Mn hockey rules did there! My point is you have to recruit from the bottom, but you also have to have a good option for them as they get older. That seems to be a problem in big D. Marshall seems to be a good possibility for some of those kids obviously. I still don't understand when we have such a limited amount of 14 teams why Mn hockey won't look outside the box a little bit. Our girls would love it because Marshall seem to have a pretty good group of players, and it would save some money and travel time, good practice for our girls. Our parents look at Duluth hockey and wonder why they've kept their leadership as long as they have. We have the same problems, but our town is only 12 thousand people. Duluth has 80. Youd think their would be some type of revolt before it gets too far out of hand.

Like a CEO is judged on increasing the value of his companies stock a hockey association president should be measured on percentage growth of their association on both sides, boys and girls. Nothing else really matters. All these types of problems are avoided if you have strong numbers coming up.

More players means more revenue, more and better teams, more kids playing at the appropriate level and more and better volunteers.

I appreciate these families attempting to come up with a solution but the problem could have been, and hopefully will be, avoided in the future by focusing on recruiting. Number 1 most important committee in every association.