Sunday, July 31, 2011

Fun Facts About USA Hockey - Paperwork Edition

Fun Fact: If you ever misplace your USA Hockey number, you can always go to the main website and request a duplicate confirmation.  All you need is your last name, DOB, and the zip code where you registered.

Less-Fun Fact: College team managers apparently tend to register their entire teams at once, and when a player then tries to pull up a duplicate confirmation they have no idea what zip code he or she is registered under.

Even Less-Fun Fact: USA Hockey is closed on Sundays.  This means, among other things, that they do not answer their phones.

Spent 20 minutes with a young woman today trying to track down her USA Hockey number so that she could sub for a short-benched women's team going into their last playoff game of the season.  No dice, of course.  Eventually, she opted to just re-register so that she could play today (most USA Hockey affiliated programs won't let you play without proof of membership, because members are covered under USAH's blanket catastrophe insurance, and it avoids all kinds of potential legal headaches).

Silver Lining of the Day: We were pleasantly surprised to learn that if you register with USAH today, it classifies you as registering in the 2011-2 season.  So instead of buying her 31 days of player eligibility, she's now covered through the end of August 2012.

In related news, ref registration goes live tomorrow for the 2011-2 season, as does seminar/camp enrollment.  I'm looking forward to seminar this year, because I'll actually know what I'm doing.  It's amazing how much stress that takes out of the training course!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Prospects (in Many Senses of the Word)

For the past week, the Development Camp for the Washington Capitals has been going on down at Kettler Capitals Iceplex.  This means 40 pseudo-teenaged boys descending on the Ballston Commons Mall (a nice counterpoint to the Harry Potter release, which also occurred this past week at the mall).

I managed to poke my head in for several of the sessions, and for a very brief recap of the camp as a whole: