“Ain’t no sense worryin’…”
Former Major League Baseball player Mickey Rivers once noted, “Ain’t no sense worryin’ about the things you got control over, ’cause if you got control over ’em, ain’t no sense worryin’. And ain’t no sense worryin’ about the things you don’t got control over, ’cause if you don’t got control over ’em, ain’t no sense worryin’.”
Some OHF minor hockey associations are probably in a tizzy over the open borders policy the mother ship announced in December, 2024. (Note: Ontario has three Hockey Canada branches: OHF, Hockey Northwestern Ontario, and Hockey Eastern Ontario. The new policy applies ONLY to the OHF.) How it will play out remains to be seen. What movement, aka. level chasing, will occur? Will there be tampering? How much? How will it be dealt with?
What to do
Frustrations and eye-rolling notwithstanding, there’s little organizations can do. They can try to apply clamps on those coming in or leaving. Whether or not these will hold up is another matter. This isn’t even a case of the policy being beneficial or not. If a parent or player wishes to go elsewhere, they will go. If a coach wishes to find a new association and “secretly” bring along a bunch of the better players from his/her team, it will happen.
Coaching minor hockey, especially at the higher competitive levels like AAA and AA, may become as much about scouting and recruiting as being a competent coach.
Tryout chaos
Come spring tryouts, will children go out with one team on a Monday, a second team on Tuesday at 6 pm and a third a 8 pm? Sure. Will coaches need to select based on one tryout? Indeed. Will it be a bit of crapshoot? Oh yeah.
The really sad part of it all is that everything that’s been mentioned, plus probably more that hasn’t, is mostly out of an association’s control. What are they to do? Mickey Rivers was right though. Instead of head bashing over all the things that could go sideways, there remains one thing associations can do: Run strong programming.
First, develop coaches
This means: solid, well thought out coach development leading to appropriate player development; hiring and training solid local individuals for team staffs, including coaches, trainers and managers; finding ways to make the game more affordable, such as having shared ice practices, especially for those in u12 and below; and a board leadership group with its feet solidly on terra firma and a plan to keep the association forging ahead.
Everyone will have to accept that some movement will occur, perhaps even a lot. For now anyway, it is the law of the OHF land. Make the association the place to play, to coach in, to volunteer with. There’s really not much of an alternative.