Recruiting

[MinnGirlsHockey]

I'm not a fan of the transfer rules because I think it tends to hurt the ones that transfer for legitimate reasons (i.e. other than hockey or sports in general). I was told this rule was implemented largely due to Hopkins basketball and girls hockey abuses (I think EP was the girls program that angered everyone the most). I don't think the rule has slowed down abuses in either so why have the rule?

From what I remember the 2006-07 St. Paul Central girls basketball team also exploited the old rule as 3 DI girls from other nearby schools transferred in just prior to that season to create an "all-star team" and they went undefeated and won a state title.

The problem with your suggestion of A teams only scheduling other A teams is some conferences have a mix of A and AA teams. Hill-Murray, Tartan, and North St. Paul, Sibley are all AA and Mahtomedi, Simley, South St. Paul are class A in their conference.

Henry Sibley dropped down to A in Girls Hockey this year but your point is still valid regarding the Classic Suburban being a mix of A & AA teams.

[MNHockeyFan]

The problem with your suggestion of A teams only scheduling other A teams is some conferences have a mix of A and AA teams. Hill-Murray, Tartan, and North St. Paul, Sibley are all AA and Mahtomedi, Simley, South St. Paul are class A in their conference.

And there are a number of other conferences that also have a mixture of Class A and AA teams. As long as high school sports in Minnesota adheres to a conference-based system during the regular season, hockeywild7's suggestion is not workable.

[ghshockeyfan]

I'm not even certain I understand the problem we are trying to solve anymore.

That being said, I think there are a number of different ways to address "it."

I think the ability to play other classes in-season, in or out of conference, should not be limited.

Instead, let's use a team's record for the season and consider the quality of the opponents (SOS) that they achieved that record against.

If you had a winning percentage above/below X against a SOS (opponents) above/below Y then you are playing in "Class A" (participation/program development based) vs "Class AA" (competition based) tourney.

Not certain if one would need to look at team composition to address private school/open enrollment strong teams that don't fall into the proper classification by enrollment or using the above-mentioned WIN%/SOS considerations.

Maybe you'd need to look at the # of "within school attendance area" players pre-HS team participation (JV or V) - or even currently how many don't reside within the school attendance area.

Some might argue for listing this information in the game programs instead of this being some dirty little secret that we gossip about behind their backs and on forums like this.

I suppose you could list "Last Team" &/or "Youth Program" &/or true "Hometown" - some could argue that this would give these communities credit for developing the players and suprisingly these kids do typically have some pride about their roots - not just where they are at now.

Hmm...

[ghshockeyfan]

The problem with your suggestion of A teams only scheduling other A teams is some conferences have a mix of A and AA teams. Hill-Murray, Tartan, and North St. Paul, Sibley are all AA and Mahtomedi, Simley, South St. Paul are class A in their conference.

Henry Sibley dropped down to A in Girls Hockey this year but your point is still valid regarding the Classic Suburban being a mix of A & AA teams.

This is a true statement about Henry Sibley. They are not opting up and down - to be clear. My understanding is that they are right at the enrollment threshold and so they get bounced around every couple years when the sections are redone.

I watched the majority of their games this past season and know the roster pretty well. I can tell you that this is a homegrown team with maybe one JV player exception.

[Hansonbrother]

As long as the system allows it to happen, it will.
As soon as the process loop holes are closed, it won't.
A bit of a simplistic view, but it's reality.

May I project a solution? why not make all Class "A" teams only be allowed to play Class "A" teams. If you don't like it, opt up to "AA." I don't believe the argument of logistics make it impossible. It seems Warroad never has an issue finding 25 games, up or down. Perhaps maybe when the big 3 get tired of winning games by 10+ goals night in and night out, they will opt to play up where they are still capable of winning.

If they were to opt up, the Class "A" tournament wouldn't have 10-0 quarter final games and the tournament would be where it should be...competitive amongst the true Class "A" teams. But as long as the HSL continues to let them have the best of both worlds, (Mixed schedules, and an easy route to the X) than get used to seeing Warroad, Breck, and So. St. Paul playing for the title game in Class "A" year in and year out.

I like your idea, and simple solution to hw7 issue. The only exception would be for conference games. I think there are very few conferences that have a mix.

The only problem I see would be for out-state AA teams, Look at Grand Rapids, CEC, Roseau how many AA teams within a 2 hour radius are there. Unfortunately we would be penalizing these teams and make their travel budgets unreasonable not to mention how that travel time would affect the players school performance.

Most of those teams are already playing a full schedule of AA teams to begin with. And most of those teams would be able to get city teams to come up and play them with out problem.

[inthestands]

If the rules were written clearly, and enforced equally, there would be little to no exception.

Clear rules, and equal enforcement being key..

[allhoc11]

If the rules were written clearly, and enforced equally, there would be little to no exception.

Clear rules, and equal enforcement being key..

That is something the MSHSL does well

[moose jaw]

There was an article not to long ago in the tribune about this very topic,basically to sum it up the mshsl take is it really comes down to the schools ad to make sure that the rules are being followed.Now in the case of so-called hockey town it doesnt take a genius to figure it out,look at a youth roster,you will notice when a certain family as a youngster on a youth team that is not very good you notice help arrives around said youngster is at high school,its fact it happened on boys side for years and now on the girls side .One more year and the focus will be back to the boys why well you figure it out,does anyone in that community ever get tired of that and what will be left of your program when they walk away from it next year,good luck.When you have parents willing to pack up very average players and move half way across the state and have three families willing to have one parent stay there or commute back and forth to there hometown or country to work any rule written will be gotten around,but hey if families still want to volunteer in the program so their little johnny and jane can sit on the bench and watch the out of town kids play oh well.I know one thing i have much more respect for the young men or women who are in a program that might be a longshot for state tournament but continue to work hard to improve themselves and there program for the chance to make arun than i do for the ones who find theselves in a tough spot and pack up and leave.

[ghshockeyfan]

What it will take to stop recruiting is for the parents of a young player to step up and turn in a coach or "agent" for the offending program. This rarely or never happens as the player and family are so thrilled about the attention and process that they'd never think of "buring that bridge" to do the right thing and turn-in the recruiter/agent.

It's tough. I know of violaitons that some may not think are problematic even. If you act as an agent of a team or school the team or school can be punished in addition to you personally. This "agent" could be an assistant coach, parent, community member, or random person that has very limited - if any - formal affiliation with the school or team. It could also be the coach - but that is so rare as most coaches are smarter than this, but I suppose some may feel they are "above the law" or maybe have been able to get away with this sort of thing for years.

What the HS leage probably would need to do is put death penalty like punishments on this to stop it from happening. Meaning the agent involved can't coach or be involved with the HS program in any capacity - or maybe any HS program - again. The player hopefully wouldn't be punished if they reported this - even if they ended up at the school/team anyway for all the "right" reasons or otherwise.

Maybe we have to go to NCAA-like recruiting policies? No meals or tickets/game passes/skating with "the team"/etc. (PS - I think these are violations of current MSHSL recruiting policies if you don't reside within the home attendance area of the high school). I don't know...

I still go back to my original post about player movement in general though:

SSP & Warroad attract a lot of players for various reasons. I'd say the schools/teams/communities "recruit" the players. They come for many, many reasons including the hockey.

I'd like to spin this topic a different direction and discuss the open enrollment rules enacted a number of years back.

Have these worked? We have only one private school team in the two tourneys this year and that's at Class A in Breck. Not sure that means anything - but I found it interesting.

I also haven't heard as much about open enrollment moves as of late - although I've been out of the game as far as coaching for a few years now.

Do we have any team that is entirely "homegrown" - meaning that their players grew-up within their HS attendance area?

[sinbin]

I'll just make a quick comment about the other side of the coin. However you define it, recruiting or team movement weakens many other teams. Think of the number of western suburban players moving to Benilde, Breck, and Blake and how much stronger your Edinas, Minnetonkas, Wayzatas, EPs, etc. would be had those players remained. I would guess that there are similar situations with eastside schools, too, and north and south.

I suppose at the end of the day, recruitment and movement, evens out over time and equalizes things for almost all schools, although there certainly still can be many exceptions on a year-to-year basis. But is the trend showing an overwhelming bias towards recruiting to private (and a select few public) schools, is it a slow and steady crawl, or is it neutral over time?