The North Texas League requires teams to participate in the Labor Day tournament. The purpose is to assist the league in executing one of its priorities--doing what it can to ensure that leagues are as competitive as they can be from top to bottom. The league slots teams at AA, A or B depending on game results and reports from evaluators the league sends to watch teams and how they play. Teams do not get to choose their own level.

We should know the team placements by the Monday after Labor Day. 

The schedule is set at an annual scheduling meeting in Dallas. That meeting is September 17 and 18, which is the second weekend after Labor Day. The schedule should be available shortly afterwards.

We won’t know that until the scheduling meeting. Northwoods has given us a list of available weekends, and are going to try and schedule as many games in San Antonio as we can.

We have been working through various ice time options with the rink. We hope to circulate a September practice schedule this week. When the game schedule is set, we may make some changes to the longer-term schedule to account for the fact that different teams will be out of town on various weekends.

House hockey is included in the fees you have already paid. The fall season starts next week. Age division schedules are, or will be, up at www.northwoodsice.net. Travel players do not need to register. We will do that for travel players as a group. We encourage kids to participate and to give their best effort. That is good for our kids and good for the house program, which we fully support. 

Those are up to teams and families. If there are families who want to go to more tournaments than their coaches or other families want to do, it’s fine for people who want to take the lead on coordinating tournament options to explore that possibility. When kids have opportunities to play tournaments with other teams (as happens occasionally) we are okay with that as long as it does not adversely affect their team. We are also okay with teams using fill-in coaches or players (with appropriate background checks, etc.) when there are not enough coaches or kids on our teams who want to go to a particular event.