IMPORTANT INFO: Welcome to a new season of VMHA hockey!
Hello and welcome to a new season of hockey.
Please read and review the following as it provides an overview of the season start-up process for all divisions. As previously communicated, our rep tryout process is scheduled to begin on Saturday August 29th.
The recreational program officially begins the week of Monday, September the 7th. Some age groups will have practice that afternoon, so please keep an eye on the schedule section of our website.
Our coaching director and recreational governors have already begun the process of reaching out to potential head coaches for our various teams.
Initial groupings for recreational teams will be posted on our website over the next weeks. Please check your grouping assignment and cross reference with the schedule for the first few weeks (also to be posted later this month) to determine your ice times. Groupings and the ice schedule will be posted here: https://www.victoriaminorhockey.ca/schedule/ when they become available. As we work through the first few weeks, changes can and will happen, so please review often! Also it is very helpful to ensure you download the Teamsnap App as you will see your team and schedule once you are moved into your team/group.
Please note that we will be hosting an information session for parents of new players only, on August 27 from 7-8:30pm. This will be held in the Owen Room at Pearkes.
Please see below for further information regarding your divisions:
U7 & U9 will be sorted into initial groups – depending on late registrations and coaching requirements some movement may occur in the first month – games do not begin for some time in this age division so final team formation may be a bit slower than the other divisions.
U11 will also be sorted into initial groups and will have 4 bust the rust/warmup practices over the first two weeks. The players will then be divided into assessment teams and will go through an assessment process in mid September to determine our development A and B teams – the remaining players will then be placed into evenly balanced C/house teams, based on the assessment scores. This process will be complete during week 3 and teams will begin practicing that week – more details will be sent to this group regarding the assessment process.
U13 through U18 (recreational) will all be placed into initial groups. They will each practice/bust the rust in those groups in week 1 before moving into assessment games in week 2. From there, we will hold a coaches draft for each age group in week 3. Once complete, we will hold balancing games over the next week and a half (through the end of week 4), to ensure that our teams are as evenly balanced as is reasonable. This will allow us to have everyone up and running as fast as possible. Players who are released from rep tryouts will be assigned to these initial groups as cuts occur.
U21 will be placed into initial groups – please expect some adjustments to those groups over the first few weeks as we aim to form balanced teams.
*Please note, however, that our recreational governor will not be able to keep this timeline intact without division coordinators to assist with this process for U11 and U15 – both of these roles are currently vacant.
Please consider volunteering your time during the assessment process for your division – there will be many opportunities to do so. The more volunteer help we have, the better this process will be for everyone.
A few other housekeeping items:
1 – All fees must be paid in full before September 1st (unless alternate arrangements have been made with our treasurer) before players can be rostered to a team. We do accept EFTs.
2 – There will be additional fees for players who make representative teams at U13, U15 and U18, as well as the U11 development teams.
3 – Please keep in mind that until rosters are finalized on Team Snap, our registration system only sends emails to the address of the parent who registered the child – after this, you should be able to go into your Team Snap profile and add extra email addresses.
