Excessive Tournament Scheduling?

[GlenA]

I'm with the coaching staff of a 12's team going to the Torhs regional in Ft Myers Feb 9-11. Their scheduling includes four of the ten 12's teams playing 9-10pm Saturday evening, again 6-7am Sunday morning, followed by midafternoon semi's and a final game not until 8:40pm (assuming they stay on time). This means the kids get 5-6 hours sleep Saturday night, 14 hours between early and and final game on Sunday (assuming same teams qualify for championship game), with the likelihood of getting home to bed between 1-2am Monday morning (a school day) assuming 2-3 hour commute home after the championships.

Is this typical of how Torhs and/or other organisations cater to the kids? I'm a big boy and I can handle this, but most of these kids will be fried by the time it's over. It seems the schedule could have been built to start each age group in a phased approach and then complete each group in similar order.

Thoughts appreciated.

[JohnHopkins]

I know that ice hockey tournaments stick to the suggested guidelines uSA Hockey has for scheduling games. They suggest that starting times start no later than:

7pm for Mites and Squirts
8pm for Pee Wees
9pm for Bantams
10pm for Midgets

I have seen, quite frequently, several Bantam games starting as late as 10:20pm.

The older kids can handle the 5-6 hours of sleep. Heck, when I was in junior high, I used to stay up late every week watching Hill Street Blues in my bedroom at 10pm on NBC. Little did my parents know! Hee hee.

I can't recall, in ice or roller, any team at Pee Wee or up playing a game earlier than 8am.

Your feelings are completly justified. Start the younger age groups at the earlier times. They shouldn't reasonally expect a team to be ready to play a game at 7am after having a faceoff time of 9pm the night before.

Sincerely,

John Hopkins
Buffalo Wings

[bullyx2]

I'm looking at the schedule now because my son's 8u team is playing in it. There is one 12u team playing @ 11:00pm friday, then again @ 7:20am saturday (and also @ 9:20 am saturday). Semms a bit excessive to me as well, but I'm new to this.

[RichardGraham]

Hi Glen,

You raise an interesting and important topic. I hope that representatives from all the major North American tournament series will post their answers to your questions here. If they don't, I'll contact them, ask them the questions directly, and report back to IHC's readers in a feature article soon.

Good work!

Sincerely,

Richard Graham
Editor
Inline Hockey Central

[GlenA]

Richard -- Thanks for your response to my post.

My 12's team, lost the championship game at the Ft. Myers Torhs tournament last night. I'm not writing this to whine about the loss, but the schedule was a definite negative factor for us and other teams in this age bracket. Please note our game times (Other teams had similar schedules):

Sat 12:40 pm
Sat 9:40 pm (puck actually dropped at 10:15pm)
Sun 6:40 am
Semifinals Sun 1:40 pm & 2:20 pm
Finals at 8:40pm (again due to delays, the puck dropped at 9:30pm)

11 hour play window on Saturday
16 hour play window on Sunday, running on 5 hours sleep.

Most of the teams playing traveled from Tampa or SE Florida (2-3 hrs to Ft. Myers).

I don't think any team, not even adults, should be subjected to the grueling combination of late, early, and again late games like we faced, with the huge elapsed windows both days. I think there should be some basic guidelines for late start times vs. ages, a maximum window between start times for games on the same day (8hrs?) and a minimum window between start times for evening and next day games (12 hrs?)

I'll appreciate any feedback from the tournament operators on this topic.

[LULU]

We just participated in a TORHS tournament this past weekend. They had so many teams that the tournament ran from 6am to 4 am the next morning. My teams first game was at 1:10 am Saturday morning. Some teams didn't start games until 3am - Crazy!
I run tournaments on Long Island and never run till the wee hours of the morning - it's not good for the kids.