There are a lot of good ideas here. It's about time for an overhaul of the league structures. Not to take anything away from Pennsbury and Neshaminy, but as it stands, they automatically qualify for the FC because they have no other AA competition in the LBCSHL. I am sure they would rather play against more AA teams instead of playing 8 games vs AAA.

If we can consolidate the leagues, it would be easier to arrange a playoff system for FC qualifying. I am not convinced the selection committee would be in favor of this, though.

I am also in favor of taking another look at the classification criteria.

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

It's not up to the selection committee to approve or dis-approve. We are appointed by the Flyers Cup committee to make the selections. We do not make the rules regarding selections and would have no say if a change were to be made.

Just a bit of info to put into this topic string. Out west in Pittsburgh, they seem to follow the classifications set by the PIAA for sports with 4 ranks (AAAA AAA AA & A). What they seem to do is use the population numbers of the top 3 ranks, and skew them down to 3 ranks. In other words schools that are AAAA in size play AAA hockey, AAA size play AA hockey & AA,A size play A hockey. If you look at their hockey teams' designation, they match up pretty well with their HS soccer programs as to which level they play at. As an example, and not to throw a wet towel on the Henderson parade, but Freeport was LESS than half the size of Henderson (260 male students vs. 592). Now how can that happen, AND how can it be justified? It seems to me, that our entire area tends to sandbag their rank so they have a chance at winning a FC. BTW, I'm just provoking thought here, I have nothing against the Henderson hockey program.

How about when Pittsburg has a private school represent them at the A level, with the Pittsburg classfication Germantown Acadmey and Malvern would have been 'A' schools. I don't know what it is i like on the recruting front out there but I don't think schools that can bring in players from more than 1 school district should be able to play anything but other schools that do the same (the set up we have at AAA for the most part)

Jigga,

There are parochial schools in Pittsburgh. If you are referring to Serra (I assume you are), they are a very small school much like Pius. However, both Freeport and Henderson are public schools. No recruiting involved. I still have quite a number of ties to the Pittsburgh HS community, and contrary to what alot of people feel out here, the Pittsburgh schools (at least the coaches I know), don't spend their time thinking of ways to screw the Philly teams in states.

Not all of them do i know that, and i know we view Pittsburg as the bad guy and i think on some cases they view us as the bad guy. Serra was a competive team for over 4 years, so its not like they had 1 lucky year of a buch of great new kids that played for 4 years, i would be very suprised if they don't recruit. Also Biship McCourt, aren't they an A school that one a bunch of times in a row?

Lemieux66,

I'm not disagreeing with you about school size, but the problem is that the schools in the East are just generally larger than the schools in the West.

Here is a list of the teams from the East, Central Penn and South Jersey included, that have a male population of 300 or less.

Germantown Acad. SH 183
Haverford School EH 253
St. Piux X IC 188
York Catholic CP 171
Episcopal Academy EH 159
Hammonton SJ 148
DelCo Christian EH 124
Springfiled (M) SH 282
Delran SJ 277
Milton Hershey CP 229
Annville-Cleona CP 219

-Delran and Hammonton are from South Jersey.
-Delco didnt field a team this year.
-Milton Hershey and Annville Cleona play Tier 2 and wont be considered for Flyers Cup unless they move to T1.
-That would leave us with GA, Haverford School, Episcopal, York Catholic, St Pius and Springfield (M) at 'A'. And I can garuntee you that GA would play up atleast to AA probably AAA.

My only point is.....the schools on the East are much bigger than the schools in the West.

Matt,

If we have bigger schools out here, why don't we have more hockey teams at the AAA level then? I'll bet that Pittsburgh has twice the # of teams playing AAA hockey than we do. I think I have a reasonable suggestion to quell the Catholic/Private school vs. Public school issue, but I have to pick up a pizza on my way home or my wife and kids might slaughter me when I get home. I'll chime in on it later tonight or tomorrow.

Sorry forgot about Flyers Cup but no offense to them they are'nt in our state. Again I know they dont go to state finals but it is unfair to other teams that would have a shot of going to state final if Washington Township didn't play. Again they are so close and have played us for years.

I think where we go wrong is that many people think that the classifications (AAA, AA & A)should represent the teams playing ability or level of talent.

Although this is true for club hockey, I beleive that this should not be the case for high school.

Even the Flyers are guilty of this in their coverage of the FC. I do not understand why the AAA coaches get interviewed during Flyers telecasts and the AAA game gets so much coverage, while the AA and A championships games are barely mentioned. I beleieve that all of the championship games should get equal coverage because it is no less of an accomplishment to win the AA or A FCs.

The reason why I stated that all private schools should be included within AAA is because (being from Philly) I am use to seperate Private and Public Leagues.

However, I have no issue with simply classifying teams by school size. My guess is (and correct me if I am wrong) is that most (if not all) private schools would fall within the AA and A range, while the AAA league would consist of all large public schools.

Also, I do not believe that teams should be able to "petition" to drop down divisions, since the classifications should be by school size (or private vs public) and not based on talent. If a team is struggling to compete then they should make the adjustments to play better within their division.

What if we (Neshaminy) had a couple of bad seasons; would we be allowed to play in the A divsion simply becuase we are struggling? I hope not.

Finally, to answer another post, yes I agree that Neshaminy and Pennsbury have an unfair advantage with FC, but I would also argue that (maye with the exception of this year), both Neshaminy and Pennsbury have deserved to play in the FC.

In the 5 straight years that we have competed in the FC we have been to the semi's twice, second round twice and lost in the first round in double overtime once.

Even this year when it was questional if we should be selected, we won a first round game and only lost by 1 goal to Conestoga. I know that everyone feel that we were outplayed, but 1 goal is 1 goal, and if not for a turn-over by our goalied from behind the net, the game could have easily been tied after regulation.

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

Lemieux66,
I think public schools should play AAA. The alaignment proposal I wrote a few years ago saw six (Flyers Cup) divisions.

AAA public
AAA private

eight public and eight private teams would make it to the Flyers cup and have seperate brackets.

The winner of the public bracket would play the winner of the Private bracket.

There could even be a AAA public champion and a AAA private champion.....with those two teams playing to determine who would go to the State championships.

-Repeat process for AA and A

The public schools dont want to play the private schools because of the competitive advantages the privates have.

With this scenario, a public league school would be garunteed a spot in the finals every year at every level.....we all know that anything can happen in a one game playoff.

Puckhead,
Most of the Private schools would be AA or A based on size.
La Salle, Bonner, O'Hara, Judge, Ryan and Roman are pretty big and would probably be AAA no matter how the division was determined.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Matt Sacks,

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Sacks:
I think public schools should play AAA. The alaignment proposal I wrote a few years ago saw six (Flyers Cup) divisions.

AAA public
AAA private

eight public and eight private teams would make it to the Flyers cup and have seperate brackets.

The winner of the public bracket would play the winner of the Private bracket.

There could even be a AAA public champion and a AAA private champion.....with those two teams playing to determine who would go to the State championships.

-Repeat process for AA and A

The public schools dont want to play the private schools because of the competitive advantages the privates have.

With this scenario, a public league school would be garunteed a spot in the finals every year at every level.....we all know that anything can happen in a one game playoff.

In theory that could work, but my fear is that we would end up with a situation similar to that within the LBCSHL... Private schools would win almost every year.

I know that anything can happen in 1 game... hell, we went 1-0-1 against HGP this year, but it would be tough for the public schools to compete in a championship.

I still think that we should have a private and public league FC.

I cannot speak for what actually happened in the meetings regarding combining the SHSHL and LBCSHL, I am just learning through the boards that the proposal was shot down, so unfortunately I cannot offer any of the reasons why it was not accepted. I spoke briefly with Kenny prior to the meeting and one suggestion he made seemed like a very good idea.

To my understanding, there were several possible configurations discussed, I found this one the most to my liking. The basic idea was to dissolve both leagues, combine and create a new league mimicking Suburban One. According to BuxMont SportsNet, combining the two leagues under this format would include every Suburban One member school fielding a hockey team except for Methacton. The private/parochial schools would form a division as Matt suggested. The idea was to follow a format similar to what EHSHL and ICSHL did with the Central League. From all accounts, that has been received quite well by the schools which is something we should be trying to accomplish in general in my opinion.

Given the positive strides the Flyers Cup Committee has made in the last 4-5 years, moves like this would seem to be one of the next natural progressions. Several schools, both public and private, have accepted hockey as a varsity sport and many others have thrown support behind their programs even if they only recognize them as clubs. I think we should be doing everything in our power to continue that trend even if it means bringing an end to some of our existing traditions.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Luber25,

How about this for a solution?

Everyone plays in the same league alignment that they do for all their school sports (Central, ChesMont, Suburban National, etc.) Leagues that don't have enough schools (Del Val & SCCL, Inter Ac & Catholic) could combine to form a league.

The Flyers Cup committee would be like the district playoff seeding committee. South Jersey would have to do the same or come up with their own alignment solution. If you want, you could hold playoffs at the A, AA and AAA levels geographically prior to the Flyers Cup. Or the rinks could run post-season/pre-Flyers Cup tournaments.

I know this is the Central format in the ICSHL. It's worked great. Awesome rivalries, AD's/Admin/Student Body understands who you're playing. Works well geographically for scheduling.

Too logical?

OK,

Got dinner on the table for everyone on time last night, so here it goes. This should be a relatively simple solution to the Catholic/Private school / Public school quandry. First, each Catholic/Private school should have an "assigned" list of feeder (Catholic Middle Schools) schools (some of the schools will overlap with other Diocesean schools - example: St. Pat's in Malvern could go either Carroll or Shanahan). This represents the "School District" for that Catholic School. Second, no public school feeders. If a kid attends a public middle school or high school the prior year, he CANNOT be eligible to play varsity hockey in his first year of attendance. This would cut down on the "recruiting" of players. An example of this is the Carroll recruitment of the goalie Silver from Coatesville back a couple of years ago. Silver would not have been eligible to play his first year. Additionally, he had Shanahan much closer to him as an educational option. This would be clear cut "recruitment". Finally, I honestly feel that the culprit in the Catholic school/Private school debate is the coaches of the Catholic schools. Some are good, and that will tend to attract players to that school. Some are sleazy and recruit players. Remember, poor ol' Pius of today once had Jerry Domish coaching it in the early '90s. He had his entire Jr. Flyer team go to Pius, and they won the 'A' Flyers Cup. So, by effectively setting a "School District" of feeder schools, this would hopefully circumvent this problem. It would then allow the Catholic & Public schools to play on a much more equal ground and thus according to school size.

L-66