the state of our sport address

[KROMMER23]

Seriously, i think roller hockey is the greatest sport of all. i am a 100% roller player, i have played ice and it was fun but i really love roller better. i have been playing competative travel tournaments at the highest levels of narch airhs torhs usahi 6pac etc... everything for well over a decade. i have seen the rise... and now the decline of the sport.

but from all of my experience i beleive the sport is in serious trouble.

i have been checking out this website for over a year now and i think its now time to see if i cant stirr up some opinions on the state of the sport

declining numbers in usa hockey inline registration, rinks going out on a daily basis, (anyone checked ebay lately theres a new USED/bankrupt rink for sale every month) and other rinks around the country with weak travel teams, low house league turnouts and more tournaments than anyone can handle have all signaled to me that i need to write this and see what the inline community has to say about it.

heres what i think ....... is ruining the long term viability of this sport

• Tournaments and travel teams and rink owners who allow these tourneys to happen. I love em! you love em! and they can be more fun than allowed for most players but they are no good and they distract everyones attention from what is important. Growing the sport. Not growing someone elses independant tournament business.

heres what i think .........would really help the sport

• If all of these tournament obsessed rink owners and players would focus on growing the house leagues up. if you have good management, organization, and good coaches theres no reason why every house league game weekend cant be as much fun as a (insert flavor of week) tournament.

before i go i want to make it clear that i love playing in tournaments and most likely will continue, i know by the number of teams that attended narch nationals this year that everyone else does too, the problem is that it has diverted everyones attention away from getting new people to start playing our sport.



i got lots more but i save it for a rainy day
the newest member of the inline debate club
-krommer

[RichardGraham]

Hi Krommer23,

Welcome to IHC. I hope you stir up a lot of debate. The sport needs it.

Even though I've personally bitched about them in the past, I now think that the various SUCCESSFUL inline hockey tournament series can't be blamed -- they saw a market, catered to it, and made a bundle.

However, why this sport's administrators/organizing bodies/governing bodies/manufacturers could not see that catering to the top of the pyramid would eventually kill the bottom of the pyramid -- after all the evidence of the past 10 years -- is inexcusable. It's just good BUSINESS sense to want to have the largest market possible.

This sport has shot itself in the foot for too long. The question is, is it too late to save it?

When will organizing bodies realize that they're killing the sport by not working together?

When will manufacturers realize that the only way to truly grow this sport is to bring more new players into it? What are they doing in that direction? I, for one, certainly don't see any large financial support for the grassroots by the major inline hockey manufacturers. I'll be gladly proved wrong -- I just don't see it.

I did see some positive signs this summer -- the largest NARCh tournament ever, the growth of State Wars, and the passion for the sport that I saw in the organizers and players at the NIHA-Canada National Championships, etc.

One man that I respect very much, Scott Hill, the manager of the Sportsplex facility in Langley, British Columbia, told me this past summer that he senses a potential inline hockey renaissance, partly because our sport is finally growing old enough to have parents who actually PLAYED the game, and who want to pass on their passion for the sport to their children. Scott also told me that "we've made so many mistakes; maybe we've made them all."

Maybe it's inline hockey's chance to grow again. I certainly hope so. But you certainly wouldn't know it by looking at the "leaders" of our great sport.

Which begs the question: Who ARE the leaders of our sport, and what are they doing to grow it?

[ACCCT2]

Definitely haven't "made them all" ("mistakes") and if there's one thing this sport HAS proven itself capabable of, it's of "making" even more you never thought possible or plausible...

Great thread idea (and Richard's right on about the manufacturers culpability/responsibility in particular), but I think the subject matter leaves way too much room for certain unprofessional "professionals" to once again over-sensitively turn it into an "us vs everyone" rant...

[KROMMER23]

yeah i know Scott and have played in Langley many times when i lived in the northwest. that is an increadible facility and they run a great program. of course it helps being in canada, even if its a stones throw from the border.

i hope the sport will resurge, however the right people need to be leading it in the right direction. hockey players are selfish, you have to be in order to be good at playing the game. the players who want the puck the most get it. what we have are a bunch of self cetered leaders who only want to make money and have fun doing it and only care about thier teams. to be honest i dont blame them. but it does need to change. some of our industries leaders need to look past thier own agendas and help grow the entire sport itself.

peace
krommer

[RINKRAT]

Man...my blood boils evertime this topic comes up. Like many of you I enjoy the tournament experience but as a league director myself for the last 10 years, I believe that the future of the league lies in the hands of the local rink owners and administrators. They are the ones that have to do something about it. I operate a very small program in South Louisiana (Yes, it's true...there is hockey in Louisiana). If you think it's tough keeping this sport alive in other areas of the country, try doing it down here where people eat, sleep and breathe LSU Tiger Football. Not that I'm not a Tiger fan myself, but most people in our area don't even know what hockey is. That makes it very difficult to keep what little hockey community we have alive when tournament hockey is the focal point of most our program members. And it's impossible for league directors like myself to get a handle on things when everytime you turn around there is another tournament series or another division for independent organized teams to play in. It's too tempting for the parents not to "chase the carrot" and when your numbers are low, there's not much you can do about it as a league directo. So the grassroots part of the program suffers. Here is what my program, along with other surrounding southern regional area programs have done about it. Check out this link: (www.ssiha.com) We formed our own travel tournament program for a fraction of the cost of traditional inline travel hockey. Also, for players to be eligible, they must have played in a house league session at least once within the previous year and can only play for their local rink to prevent recruiting from other programs while boostin local house league enrollment. Players pay a one time fee before the season starts that covers all 4 tournaments and each rink hosts an event and share in the profits, basically cutting out the middle man. We were also able to select and an All Star team to represent the league and send them to the Disney Inline Hockey Shootout in Orlando, FL. The League was a success, best of all, anyone that wanted to play could so it wasn't a "members only" club. All they had to do was register, which means no one was exlcuded. This alowed grassroots level players to enjoy the tournament experience, not just elite. We had 4 programs involved last season (Gulfport, MS - Lafayette, LA - Shreveport, LA & New Orleans, LA) and hope to expand to 6 next year with the possible addition of programs from Houston, TX and Pensacola, FL. It didn't solve all of our problems but it was definitely a healthy start. Some of the elite players didn't play but so what. We had no problem filling any of the rosters and kids got to PLAY HOCKEY!!!

RAT

[skooled]

Rat, that is great thinking. But make sure you stick to your guns!!! they tried to say that here in aus, you had to play club before states, and state before nationals, but the selfishness and arrogance of some people finally won, and that system went out the door

[KROMMER23]

That is a great idea, it hits all of the right points and i hope that it continues to bring good grassroots success in.
I agree that league administrators and rink owners need to front this change but that will not happen because as you said its hard not to chase the carrot of tournament play.
The change needs to come from higher up. like maybe usa hockey inline. (ohh im sorry but thats harsh) seriously, i know those guys, they are great people, and they are doing what they can but its not enough. there needs to be more than just three people in the ranks of usainline trying to control a sport. lets face it this sport needs an actual governing body to control it. i hate to say it and sound rediculosly democratic but free enterprise cant help the sport. The way things are now are far too fragmented, everyone is doing thier own thing. and tournament directors (whom are typically high end players) are far better suited, and know how to appeal to kids rather than someones rich dad who puts up a rink and cant figure out why kids arent signing up to play. in roller hockey if you build it they wont come. period. i have witnessed this happen. There needs to be structure and control. there litterally needs to be a formula for how to grow and maintain this sport. and research needs to be done for what that formula is. theres a formula to McDonalds success and Starbucks, the same is true for the sport of roller hockey.

one thing i know for sure is that everyones house league would be better if it were more fun. what if you could build up all of the excitement that you see when you go to a big narch regional and direct it into every weekend of house league play? lots of prizes, awards, stats (kids love stats), build that fun culture, heck even create cool looking banners, equipment companies banners hanging around. part of what the kids love so much about the big tournaments like narch and torhs etc. is the circus that surrounds it.

When was the last time anyone was around for the dawn of a new sport? its been a while basketball, baseball, football, since they started. how did the godfathers of those sports do it?

-krommer

[skooled]

how did they do it???

their sport is a cheap game to play. even to play a pickup game is expensive. chewing through wheels, stick blades, gloves etc. they are definately not cheap to buy. this is what is helping to kill the sport. equiptment prices need to be reduced somehow, to bring in more players. top of the line baseball cleats, or basketball shoes are not even as expensive as some bottom line skates.

yes, a merge of your tournaments, associations is definately needed to keep the game viable. each of these has their own vision for the future, and a path to get there. if they were working together, it would definately make a difference.

-Strong, unified leadership
-Competetively priced equiptment
-a new "mighty ducks"esque movie, as wierd as it sounds, watch what it will do. there has to be a story of a school team, or college team that can be used like all the footbal and basketball ones that are aout there at the moment. even though it would probably be a movie about Ice, it will bring kids in like the last movies. I know it brought alot of kids in here in australia when they were first released...

[TULaw]

haha I can see it now "D4: Mighty Ducks Inline"

[skooled]

well I did hear rumours about one, with jessy jackson??? coming back as a coach bombay sorta figure...

[DannyG]

my 2 cents...those of you who know me know that I have been working on this sport for fifteen years...I have left my cushy government job to start a rink as a multi-sport recreation business...

my thoughts:

1. the sport sells itself...the sport is fun to play...when you learn to skate, you are cool, you can do something that the star athletes in other sports cannot...

2. if the rink has the equipment to use for FREE, so any kid can learn to play BEFORE spending a ton of money on gear, no other parental hesitancey/objection will stand up...

3. If kids learn about it, they will think about it...if they see it, they will want to try it, if they try it, a high percentage will love it...

At the moment, in my rink, I am working hard on number three...if every kid knew about my place, I would have hundreds of kids in here...as it is I got about 150 over the past four months...I need to double/triple that to make money...if I can hold on til I get that number than it will work...This season, I even have the numbers for and under-6 league set, believe it or not...

Anybody got ideas for free promotion/publicity...I am doing a bunch of things, but can always use some new ideas!

That two cents above is about all I have after sinking every penny into this...

I'll let you know how it goes...

[RichardGraham]

Geez, Danny, what can I say but good luck? Let me know if there's anything I can do.

[skooled]

Danny, I have one word for you. SCHOOL. Go offer your local schools a free programme for a month, as part of their sport programme, and whatch them fly in the door.

[KROMMER23]

get coaches who have more than a clue about the sport. strickly ice coaches dont get it, and parents are even worse. good coaching can take any league and make it more successful, because its a lot more fun for kids when thay know what they are doing and can see progress.

and always keep your league fun!!!!! prizes go the longest way with kids.

[skooled]

That is true. do you have training courses for your coaches???