When the North Texas league dissolved and the Stars league took shape in the early summer, the board spent countless hours engaging other associations about what was going on and why, so we could evaluate whether we should join the Stars league or go with a confederation of teams that were not invited to join or which decided to branch out on their own. The Stars league website has a page explaining the background and what the new league hopes to accomplish at http://www.dsthl.com/page/show/524615-about-us. You will see from this link that events over the last few years in the Dallas market drove the folding of the old league and the creation of the new one. After listening to many viewpoints on all sides, we decided to join the Stars league. After the meeting Friday night, I am even more convinced than before that this was the right decision for us. The board and and I are very optimistic about the experience our kids are going to have in the Stars league.

Creating a more formal structure, especially at the AA level, is key to the new league. The structure has two parts The first part primarily affects the Dallas and Houston markets. The second affects us. First, there are five "charter members." These associations did the heavy lifting to create the league. There are four in Dallas (the Junior Stars, Stars Elite, Penguins, and Alliance) and one in Houston (the Wild). The other associations like ours are "affiliate members." Charter organizations are the designated AA organizations in Dallas and Houston. Teams from other Dallas and Houston organizations will not be allowed to hold AA tryouts. Over time, they anticipate that this will funnel the true AA players to the charter organizations in the two larger markets.

Second, the league recognizes that single team markets like ours, Austin, and OKC will have teams of varying strength from year to year. They want our kids to be in the divisions that fit each team's talent level. They also want us to be able to keep groups of strong players together by not limiting how high up the ranks we can go. Consistent with the TAHA rule that kids should play locally unless they make a Tier 1 AAA team, the Stars league rules allow smaller market teams to play AA when the talent on that team supports it. No one specifically said it this way, but it is clear that the league recognizes the fact that organizations like ours see a talent drain as kids get into bantam and midget, and sometimes sooner. Parents move the family or send their kid out of town or out of state because they see the grass as greener somewhere else. My sense is that the league wants to incentivize our teams to stay together with the potential AA reward. Our bantam black team came up more than once in the meeting, as proof that when kids from out of town stay together, come to Labor Day, and show that they deserve it, they can move up to AA and play with some of the best teams in the state.

The meeting then turned to scheduling, and specifically a new requirement that Dallas teams travel twice during the season. Previously the rule had been that teams had to travel once. Two things prompted the change. The macro level reason is that the Stars league believes the league and the sport are better off with strong markets throughout the state and that the out of town teams bring value to the league. Strong associations in markets like ours make the league better, and that helps the overall goal of growing the game in every city and town. The ability to host high level travel games in markets other than Dallas and Houston helps sell the sport. Anyone who attended last year's squirt finals at Northwoods knows this is true. Those games were electric and kids and parents alike watched them and said "I want into that."

The micro concept is that the league gets what being a hockey family in a market like ours involves. One of the speakers said he has a son who played on a spring tournament team and this had led him to meet non-DFW parents he hadn't met before. As he put it, he thought he was a rock star dad driving 30 miles to practice, but came to realize that was nothing compared to what the non-Dallas parents do. The Dallas teams also credit the Houston Wild for making a persuasive case that traveling twice was right thing to do. Most of the participants in the meeting were Dallas-based, so it's not like this was a pitch tailored for us or another smaller market team. It's the new philosophy and it's encouraging. For us, it's important that we reinforce it by doing what we can to make the travel experience fun for the teams coming in. We are already known as one of the best hosts in the state, so this won't be something new for us.

As the season is getting started, some issues have arisen about what teams in the Stars league can and cannot do with teams that broke off and formed the Southwest Select series (the "SWSHS" or "swish" as some pronounce it). League rules bars Stars league teams from participating in SWSHS tournaments. No exceptions. There is no rule against specific associations scrimmaging SWSHS teams, but all five charter organizations stated that their organization will not schedule scrimmages with SWSHS teams. The SAYHA board shares this view.