Sounds like quite a bit of restructuring for the ICSHL for next season. Anyone have a detailed report on what's in store? I hear Shanahan, GA and Wood are trying to move down to AA, and both D'towns and all 3 West Chester teams up to AA as well. True?

umm, the icshl doesn't have an "A" or "AA" league, they have "AAA", North, South, and Central and every league has single and double "A" teams. So what are you actually talking about? For Flyers Cup/States?

I know from what I've heard from around the glass that Wood wants to play AA.

GA is rumured to be having trouble fielding a team.

yeah, i thought GA was folding.

I heard if they found someone to fill Stampone's shoes (goalie) they would field a team, but it didn't sound like that was going to happen.

Should be an indication that private schools do not hold any advantage over the large public schools in most cases, when it comes to hockey.

haha try telling Methacton, Garnet Valley, Interboro or Upper Darby that

I have to disagree with you EH2.

GA is the exception to other private schools.
On top of looking for good hockey players, GA is looking for students to fit their high academic standards and GA is also one of the most expensive private schools in PA.

It's tough to find students that can play, afford and meet the academic standards of GA.

Plus I believe, but I am not positive, that when attending GA, a student athlete must be able to play multiple sports at the varsity level.

Episcopal and GA are very similar on those fronts. Compared to many of the private schools they do not place as much emphases on second tier sports (however GA does with swimming) so their recruiting in sports like hockey is not a top priority like basketball and football. At EA you must play a sport all 3 seasons with the exception of 1 season off in your 4 years of high school. They are small schools so after getting a few “hired guns” on the basketball, football and lacrosse teams that leaves little room for “recruiting” hockey players also both of these schools are co-ed so they have almost twice the amount of sports teams to fill (Haverford School and Penn Charter run very similarly minus Haverford school is not co-ed).
However Malvern and La Salle have traditionally put more emphasis on their entire sports program and sometimes make it obvious that they clearly do “recruit” players based on athletic ability. I also don’t think there is anything wrong with this, these schools are not breaking any rules by doing this and both schools offer tremendous academics.

Which brings me to my next point, I think the AAA division is set up exactly the way it should be, any school that takes players from more than 1 school district should play AAA. I don’t sympathize with Wood just because they have a bad team doesn’t mean they should move down. If they don’t want to “recruit” or can’t they should try and change the rules, not take the easy way out. If they have such a problem with competing with schools that do “recruit” they should change the rules.

I have heard that the PIAA is adopting a new transfer policy where if a player transfers to any other school he must play the next year on the JV team. I feel as if that would end the debate and the excuse of “he transferred for academic reasons.” I believe that sometimes players do transfer for academic reasons so sitting out a year of a varsity sport shouldn’t change that. So until the Flyers Cup committee or the leagues adopts a rule like this, schools like Malvern, O’Hara, La Salle in particular will continue to get new players and who can blame them.

Wood can and has "recruited" players.

Just a few years ago Robert Gray transfered from Wissahickon in his senior year and Jared Sidman from North Penn in the same season. Wood was trying to get Ryan and Casey Stern from Bensalem two years ago, but that fell through.

Under the idea that the "Private" schools should all be AAA, that would put St Pius and McDevitt in that barrel. Clearly these teams could not compete at this level, and it appears over the last couple of years nor has Wood been able to. My daughter is looking at high schools, she vistited both Wood and McDevitt. McDevitt lists Ice Hockey as a "club" in their activities offering, but the Team is not run by the school but by a parent family who have had several boys go through the school and played ice hockey for them over the years. I don't remember seeing Ice hockey mentioned at all in the activities offering for Wood. So I am assuming it is a similar situation. Recruiting for these schools/teams is much different than a Malvern or LaSalle who's schools embrace hockey as a Varsity sport. Recruiting is done by the parents/coaches in the program, not the "school" itself, so there is no preferential treatment in terms of admission and no scholarships (athletic) as related to the school.

I don't completely know Wood's situation but based on what I do know it seems harsh to say that Wood is trying to "take the easy way out". If Wood is no longer able to compete, why shouldn't they be given the same consideration that St. Pius and McDevitt have been.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ralphy,

there is no reason for a school like wood not to have a good team. theres 4 or 5 rinks just in the area they draw from. 2 years ago they had a very good team. there are plenty of players they could get, maybe they have to do a better job of getting kids interested in the program. they draw from the council rock, abington, north penn, central bucks and centenial school districts. these are all huge districts. if they got 3 good players from each of these districts, they would have a very good team. it comes down to the program, and the ammount of effort they want to put into making the team successful.

HGP, alot of what you say is true, but it is simply not that easy. Many of the teams related to the school districts you mentioned have upgraded their hockey programs over the last several years (and yes - many of these are "club" teams similar to a McDevitt or Wood), so in essence they've leveled the playing field on what they can offer in terms of "hockey". With the private schools you also have tuition cost and admission requirements, which of course comes down to the ability of parents to pay, which of course gives parents a say in where a child goes to school. As a parent you need to look at what is best for your child, with the new ultra-modern public schools recently built (CB South for example), the facilities and opportunities they offer are tremendous, something that a Wood or McDevitt being Archdiocesan high schools just donn't have the resources to match. That's not saying anything bad about Wood or McDevitt, they are good schools, that's just the reality of the situation. You are paying for hockey at any of the schools in the areas you mentioned, the resources for those programs come from what they take in from the players, not from the schools.

If you have the ability (finances) to allow your child a choice and are choosing a local high school on the basis of the hockey program alone - in my opinion that's pretty misguided. If you are a serious hockey player, your potential advancement in hockey and the better competition level is coming from Juniors or AAA programs, not from High School programs in this area. Most (if not all) of the top players in high school in this area are playing in high level club programs, very few are playing HS alone.

I know I'm getting off tangent here, but with the nature of HS hockey, it just isn't as simple as some people make it out to be for some of the "private" schools to just go out and get players.

Just to add my 2 cents... I believe that every private school should be AAA, and this includes Wood, McDevitt and Pius.

The AAA, AA and A divisions should be divided into teams that share the same advantages to recruiting players and should not be based on the "talent" of the team.

Private schools (AAA) can pull players from multiple districts and therefore have an advantage when it comes to building a team.

Larger public schools (AA) have an advantage over the smaller schools (A) quite simply becuase they have a larger student population to pull from.

Larger public schools can not move down to A simply becuase they have a bad team, and the same rules should be applied to all private schools.

Also, I wish that we could find a way to banish the "leagues" and change them into "divisions" under 3 leagues: one Private League (AAA), one Large School Public League (AA) and one Small School Public League (A).

And while I am on my soapbox, I wish that the LBCSHL and Suburban leagues could find a way to combine their resources and create 1 division.

As a coach of a AA team in LBCSHL, I would love to play a full AA schedule and have the opportunity to play for a AA division championship each year: It doesn't matter how consistant and competitive Neshaminy and Pennsbury are each year, we always have to play against AAA teams in order to have a chance to win our league.

There is a reason why only 1 time in the 20-some years in which the LBCSHL has been around that a public school team has won the championship.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: puckhead,

You bring up a good idea. Take away McDevitt and the two LaSalle teams in the SHSHL AA and add Neshaminy and Pennsbury. It makes a 13 team league of all AA teams, each team plays each other twice, 24 games each. That would be nice, only no crossover games.