league thoughts

[flood-23 0]

i play hockey in england and was thinking the other day, why is it that we only play the teams from our region through the season? i was thinking it would be cool if we had one huge league and traveled up and down to play different teams all over gb, instead of just playing the same amount of teams every season add a bit more to the season in the way of excitement and chaos :P whats everyone think ?

[TomMc#4 0]

ice or roller, what league/level?

[eric42434224 1]

Traveling costs money.

[RecLeagueHero 0]

We end up traveling up and down the west coast for rugby matches. Of course, it's a little more involved than a two period run time, one period stop time rec league hockey game. Also, the club dues for an entire year are about 1/3 of the cost of a summer hockey season. I could see something like this getting maybe guys that just aged out of juniors and their competive days are pretty much over. But that's a lot of dough in travel costs for novice skaters to travel to play teams that aren't much different from what they could at home.

[flood-23 0]

roller, gbhi midlands 18s n seniors, yeah thats why we need to try get it more recognised, get sum support, u get support u may get supporters who want ahirts like in every other sport, get them shirts u get money, it should be huge but it aint which sucks, if u ask me it needs more recognition as a sport

[start_today 770]

My wife played in a women's league that traveled, because cities in the area could only field one or two women's teams. The league was essentially the equivalent of a mens rec league, but teams had to drive 4 hours one way in some cases. Their costs are pretty high, and it's not super competetive. The more competetive and serious you get, the more of a governing body you need, which means even more $$$$.

There's a whole lot that goes into organzing stuff like this, and it gets really expensive. You need people to serve on a board to organize travel between teams, rent hotels, get refs and facilities, etc.

I couldn't really follow what league/level you play at, but there's just a lot of work that goes into this sort of thing. No one wants to do that much work unless their getting something back. That either means 1) volunteers who are involved with the league who are willing to give up their time, or 2) paying people to do all that, which means things cost even more money.

[team50 20]

Start with tournaments in other regions, may be once or twice per season to gauge interest.

[Chadd 916]

It only makes sense in a situation like the one "start today" mentioned.

[hunterphfr 12]

I'd never thought of it before but your question just gave me a momentary flash of possible genius.

What you could do is find a comparable division in an area within a reasonable distance. Try and get a "championship game" between the winners of your division and theirs. Your rink one season their rink the next. That way you don't face the threat of traveling all the time but the potential is there and when it happens it provides you with a unique and non-repetitive opportunity.

Of course the problem would be figuring out the cost and getting the rink/league managers to come on board.

[IniNew 53]

I'd never thought of it before but your question just gave me a momentary flash of possible genius.

What you could do is find a comparable division in an area within a reasonable distance. Try and get a "championship game" between the winners of your division and theirs. Your rink one season their rink the next. That way you don't face the threat of traveling all the time but the potential is there and when it happens it provides you with a unique and non-repetitive opportunity.

Of course the problem would be figuring out the cost and getting the rink/league managers to come on board.

We did something similar to this. We partnered with a league last session that only had 4 teams to our 8, so each Saturday, one of the Arlington Teams would drive over to our rink, and 1 Thursday out of the session we would drive to their rink.

It worked fine until not a single on of their teams got a win against ours.... they opted out the next session.

[flood-23 0]

yeah well ill have to talk to my coach about it see if he thinks they will come on and do it then we'll have to get in touch with the league managers