HighSchoolHockeyForums.com

A few weeks ago Mn Hockey made a quiet adjustment to the girls' HP 17 program for this spring, provided there will be one. This year, 2003 birth years currently juniors in high school, will be allowed to tryout and compete with the 2004s.

The exact wording from MNHOCK:
New this year, 2003 born players who are juniors in high school will be invited to tryout and participate in the same process as the HP 17 (2004) players. This change is designed to provide players born late in the year, who may have been overlooked in the past due to the relative age effect, and still have high school eligibility with another development opportunity.

It appears someone is up to 2011 in working through their reading list (date of publication of Outliers). Unfortunately, this kind of misses the point. The inequity Outliers talks about is better addressed with opportunities for 6-12 year olds, like changing away from calendar year AAA events and teams, not for juniors in high school hoping for college commitments that are no longer available. And we will now have kids participating in an event that is explicitly about identifying Minnesota kids to compete for the U18 team who are ineligilbe play on the U18 team. Okay...?

Isn't there usually a NIT tourney that would take these late year juniors?

Looking around - the Central District (WI, etc.) isn't allowing late 03s to try out. It doesn't appear New York is either. Websites can always be wrong, of course.

I don't buy the rationale for the reason mentioned - these girls will be U19s in 2022 and can't play in the IIHF tourney. So I'm quite cynical but not surprised as to why this is happening. The "people in charge" know their market and they know parents will pay for the chance to make their kids skate 3-4 hours on an April weekend for FOMO.

My guess - I'm sure Minnesota Hockey's finances are in substandard condition due to the loss of 2020 HP, and they want 80-100 more girls trying out in April to help balance the budget.