JMS Hockey

I have just taken over the duties of administrator for AHA tiers D-2 and D-1. JMS and AHA have, for the most part, a symbiotic relationship. Many players currently playing on AHA teams began , playing recreational hockey at JMS. Many players began with AHA and play JMS in order to be able to play more hockey and to improve their skills. This is particularly true I think with players in the D-2 and D-1 tiers which are at the lower levels of AHA. Indeed, I have seen players in those tiers who play JMS a lot, improve their skills faster than many who do not. So I urge AHA players to play JMS hockey , and, urge those playing at JMS to take a look at AHA if they are interested in playing in a competitive, regulation league with pro style uniforms and which keeps stats on both teams and players. The degree to which both JMS and AHA puts emphasis on parity is commendable and makes playing in these entities so much more fun. Barry

I have a question. What all goes into setting up evals for AHA? I have thought about trying my run at evals, but seems I always miss them for one reason or another. So I am just wondering if its like a real eval or if you just need a person from the admins like yourself to just be at a skate the same time I am to just watch how I do? I think it would be great to be part of a team.

Adam, AHA schedules evaluation sessions prior to both summer league and the regular Fall/Winter league. Evals for summer are going on now. Regular season evals will probably start in late August. You can find the eval schedule and info about them on the AHA web site www.ahahockey.com. The evaluations are comprehensive. Like JMS, you first provide answers to some questions about you hockey backround and experience. The sessions then put you thru a number of drills with info from the observers put into a computer program. Then you participate in a scrimmage to observe you further. All that is then used to rate you at the lowest level you may initially begin playing in AHA. As far as finding a team to play with, JMS players can post their wishes to find a team at what ever level they are here on the adult leagues page of Forums, and AHA teams often post when they are looking for players. Barry

Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can also get some help finding a team to play with by contacting an AHA official.

One more thing, please don't interpret my explaination about the AHA evaluation as being complicated for the players that are evaluating. To the contrary, it is actually fun. All of what I describe above is done in one session which lasts about one and a half hours including the scrimmage.

If the evaluation of goalies is any indication, the whole system needs a lot of work. In my opinion the problem is that the skill level of people in the same evaluation is way too varied. There's no way you can accurately gauge someone's skill when you have two people skating at the same time where one just learned to skate and the other has been playing their entire life. I understand what you're trying to do with the evaluations, but I think they should be shorter and restricted to experience levels.

The goalie eval I did 2 years ago was horribly handled. If you're interested in the details of my experience, Barry, I'd be happy to share. Just send me a PM.

Nick and Kris, I appreciate the feedback from both of you. Nick, please keep in mind that there are literally hundreds of players that want to evaluate each season and a limited number of individuals from AHA to do it and limits on ice time that can be obtained for this as well. We have all level evals more commonly for summer league. But for the regular Fall/ Winter evals, the levels are split up with higher levels held separate from lower levels. Again, due to the limitations I mentioned, we cannot do separate ones for each individual level. As for goalie evals, there is at least on knowledgealbe and experienced goalie present to observe and rate. I don't claim it to be perfect. Rating goalies is tricker than out skaters. Kris, I note that you play JMS at Elite level. It's not that I am not interested in the details of your experience but it would be more productive to provide it to league official Pete Morrow , e-mail address: pmorrow@ahahockey.com

Barry I sent you a PM, I didn't really feel like going into detail here. Thanks for your time.

Barry, that's why I said shorter and more leveled would be helpful. You could easily split the hour and a half into two 45 minute sessions based on experience. You wouldn't need any more people. The more experienced skaters would be easier to judge and you could spend less time on the drills and just watch them play in a game situation. As for the goalie evals, in the hour and a half I was there I think I took maybe 5 shots that were on net and decent during the drill portion and 1 or 2 during the scrimmage. How you can judge someone based on that is beyond me. I've played my entire life through college and ended up as a C1. I signed up for the sub list, and played a few games but the only teams I heard from were C1/B3 and those levels aren't enjoyable for me. The play is just too slow and unpredictable. This is all just my opinion, but as an outsider looking in that's what I see.

Nick I sent you a PM, as you'll see my eval process was somewhat similar and just as frustrating if not moreso.