Programme Ideas...

[rebel96 0]

Hey,

I'm part of a pretty small inline hockey organization the bulk of whose progammes consist of pick-up hockey twice a week and an annual national league that usually runs from December to May which we dominate (not because we're amazing or anything but because the standard is low and there are so few teams). Throughout the duration of the league one of the pick-up sessions becomes a proper practice session. As you would imagine a constant run of pick-up hockey (quite often with only one goalie) for 6 months of the year gets pretty stale pretty quick.

So we've tried running house leauges to freshen it up. Problem is that the most teams we can make is 4 at a stretch because we've only got 4 goalies (and some can be pretty flakey) not to mention that our standard is incredibly mixed (from people just learning the basics to people who can hit top corner every time) and we've barely got enough people to fill 4 teams. We've tried rotating goalies to facilitate extra teams but they just complain that they have too many games or no sense of belonging to a team. The way we've done it in the past is to tier players by skill level and try to distribute skill evenly across all teams to make the league as competitive as possible. This often results in players hating their team, groups of friends being separated etc.

Can anyone suggest other types of programmes that we could run so we didn't have to make do with low quality pick-up sessions every week?

[Chadd 916]

Pay goalies or have a set of loaner equipment and some skill clinics for goalies to develop more talent in the position. In a small league you need to distribute talent or the best players will end up skating together and taking the fun out of it for everyone else.

[rebel96 0]

We've got a set of loaner goalie equipment which we loaned to one of the 4 I mentioned. Unfortunately developing him didn't work out very well because he's one of the flakey ones. On top of that trying to convince anyone else to play in net is a bitch.

Now paying goalies is an interesting idea. Not sure if we could afford it but it's intriguing.

[Chadd 916]

We've got a set of loaner goalie equipment which we loaned to one of the 4 I mentioned. Unfortunately developing him didn't work out very well because he's one of the flakey ones. On top of that trying to convince anyone else to play in net is a bitch.

Now paying goalies is an interesting idea. Not sure if we could afford it but it's intriguing.

It's a way to get them to show up at least.

[Darkbyte 0]

Im assuming your goalies already play for free.

How long are your periods? One of our leagues do 2 x 20min periods. Perhaps having shorter games may make playing multiple games more attractive. We have a couple of goalies who will play 3 games back to back (we have 4 games per night), whilst others wont jump in the net unless they have to.

Our teams are balanced in a similar way to what you used. As the season progresses we have less and less people turn up due to other comitments, so we regually have people playing extra games if one of the other teams are short handed. This does lead to imbalance, but what can you do?

Sure everyone likes to play with their mates, they can do that at pickup.

Just remember, you cant please everyone all the time. If they really want to play, they will come.

[rebel96 0]

Ya our goalies already play for free.

I think in the past our games have been pretty short. We've done something like 2 X 12 min periods.

Our leagues have also ended up as you say with everyone turning up at the beginning but attendance dropping off as it progresses and people playing extra games to make up numbers.