Mike Serba Memorial Golf Tournament

Minor Hockey Try-Outs

In The End – Welcome To Reality

I recently had occasion to talk to a typical hockey parent who was new to the minor hockey experience.  He relayed a bad experience relating to hockey try-outs with his son for this upcoming season. He was completely new to the hockey experience in the GTHL (Greater Toronto Hockey League) which happens to be the biggest minor hockey system in the world. Now the scenarios that I will be describing are based on my experience with the GTHL  of the greater Toronto area. I’m not sure exactly how things are done elsewhere, however I’m reasonably certain there are similar experiences in all centres where minor hockey is played

I know try-outs for this season have now passed but this is a topic on which the uninitiated need some advise. Stay tuned for the real goods on minor league hockey try-outs.

The Way It’s Supposed To Be …. Or

The Way You’re Led To Believe It Will Be ….. Or

Maybe The Way It Once Was

At one time in the GTHL the try-outs could begin only after the GTHL held its annual meeting which was traditionally held the first Sunday in May.

Every parent would look for a publication titled “Sporting Scene” that would publish an edition known as the May try-out edition. This publication was given away in every hockey arena located within the GTHL. It was always the biggest publication of that paper in numbers of the year.

In the old days all try-outs were held at once with single A, double A and triple A all going on at the same time. Today it’s different as the GTHL finally got smart and got it right so that try-outs are tiered, with Triple A first followed by Double A and then Single A. This time of year was always “panic time” for everyone but especially for players wanting to make a team at a higher level that last year. Since all of the try-outs start on the same day, the panic was to find the teams you want you might want to make and check the schedule to prioritize your choices. There’s only so much time in the day and there’s only so many try-outs a player could realistically do in a day and maintain a reasonable level of performance. The other difficulty is that one is never quite sure how many spots are available on any given team and should you choose to miss a team’s first try-out; will there be any spots left by the second try-out?

The panic and angst at this time of year is through the roof, especially for the parents.

The Way It’s Supposed To Be

Teams would have a few open spots available and advertise for open try-outs for players to fill those spots (a team should almost always have open spots especially if thew coach has done his job well; he should have been able to advance a few players to a higher level).

An experienced coach will know how to hold an organized and well run try-out (in fact a good hockey organization should probably have a coaches meeting as an information session to educate coaches on how to run a proper try-out session).

Note: I was initially going to go into considerable detail about running a proper try-out, however there’s actually quite a bit of detail involved that would fill up this blog so I’m going to do a specific blog at the end going over my thoughts about running a good try-out.

Suffice it for now to say that a good try-out would have a proper registration process, start with warm-up type drills that would involve the display of as many hockey skills as possible, end with a scrimmage that mimics as much as possible the play of an actual game and have good qualified spotters in the stands evaluating the players.

In the end some players will be selected and offered a spot on the team and some will not; leaving some people happy and others disappointed.

Welcome to reality. This is just the way life is and this is part of the real life learning experience through involvement in the hockey scene. If you want to protect yourself and your child from every disappointment in life; then don’t get involved in hockey or for that matter any other organized sport.

Minor Hockey Try-Outs 

In The End – Welcome To Reality

In Part 2 of this topic I’ll outline some reality about how it really is.

Note:

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