Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Ffs, Louisiana is a hockey desert. The dmv is actually a pretty good youth hockey area. If, at 14u going into 16u, you think your kid has a chance of making “it” you have have some decisions to make, but that true of all American families except those in Minnesota, Detroit, and Boston, maybe Buffalo and Chicago too. But cmon, we don’t need to be so dramatic about it.

1000%. Even areas in CANADA have remote small towns where the AA or AAA team has to travel 3 hours for almost all of their games because they are from way north Ontario or middle of nowhere BC.

The Hockey havens (Minnesota, Michigan, New England) have more hockey, sure, but the DMV hockey offerings are way better that areas like North Carolina.

I'm in North Carolina. I always get a little giggle out of the number of DMV teams that come down here for tournaments. But, yeah, our options are very slim here. Two AAA programs in the whole state, neither of which are good imo. Even the AA programs are middling at best.

We looking to leave NC for a whole host of reasons and we're trying to decide if we return to DC, or go to Minnesota, which is where DH and I went to college and lived for several years after (before moving to DC). It feels absurd that we're taking youth hockey opportunities into account, but here we are. Believe me, the option to keep travel mostly in state in incredibly appealing. Then again, all paths lead to beer league, so maybe just playing rec hockey in the DC area is the way to go.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Ffs, Louisiana is a hockey desert. The dmv is actually a pretty good youth hockey area. If, at 14u going into 16u, you think your kid has a chance of making “it” you have have some decisions to make, but that true of all American families except those in Minnesota, Detroit, and Boston, maybe Buffalo and Chicago too. But cmon, we don’t need to be so dramatic about it.

1000%. Even areas in CANADA have remote small towns where the AA or AAA team has to travel 3 hours for almost all of their games because they are from way north Ontario or middle of nowhere BC.

The Hockey havens (Minnesota, Michigan, New England) have more hockey, sure, but the DMV hockey offerings are way better that areas like North Carolina.

Anonymous wrote:

Ffs, Louisiana is a hockey desert. The dmv is actually a pretty good youth hockey area. If, at 14u going into 16u, you think your kid has a chance of making “it” you have have some decisions to make, but that true of all American families except those in Minnesota, Detroit, and Boston, maybe Buffalo and Chicago too. But cmon, we don’t need to be so dramatic about it.

Anonymous wrote:This thread is correct. DMV is a hockey desert. Minnesota is absolutely the right play if you are looking to move to support your kids hockey interest. If its a good choice to move for a kids sport interest is probably for another thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hockey is an unusual sport in that if you want to play in college, you can't even go straight from high school to D1, you basically have to play junior hockey until you age out at 20-21 and then you go to play D1, which is why D1 hockey players are much older than other D1 athletes. A lot of recruiting happens out of junior hockey. So if playing in college is really your aim, then this isn't a terrible model assuming they have connections to the right junior programs.

If you want your kid to play D1, you need to move to Canada. Since the NCAA started allowing guys from Canadian juniors in, the pipeline now goes through Canada.

Anonymous wrote:Hockey is an unusual sport in that if you want to play in college, you can't even go straight from high school to D1, you basically have to play junior hockey until you age out at 20-21 and then you go to play D1, which is why D1 hockey players are much older than other D1 athletes. A lot of recruiting happens out of junior hockey. So if playing in college is really your aim, then this isn't a terrible model assuming they have connections to the right junior programs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ant parent who would consider sending their kid to “ school” at a dilapidated ice center for mediocre DMV hockey really needs to have their head checked.

Let's be brutally honest, the entire kiddie club sports/clinics industrial complex is a massive scam. If your kid is not a natural born athlete, all the tens of thousands of dollars spent on sports over the years is as good as lit on fire.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is it?

Considering the state of many of our public schools, it may not be a bad option. 😆

True! The online education might be fine. I don’t like when kids make a sport their whole identify, though. So few make it to a professional level, which means the rest need friends, school and hobbies unrelated to their sport to fall back on when things don’t work out.

I assume they’d make friends with the other hockey students? All the public school kids play Roblox instead of pursuing other hobbies. It’s not hard to keep pace with that.

That's the issue, though. Their whole world is hockey, including their friends and school. They need other interests and outside friends. They need to understand that they are more than a hockey player and when they are having a bad season, life goes on and they have other things to anticipate and enjoy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ant parent who would consider sending their kid to “ school” at a dilapidated ice center for mediocre DMV hockey really needs to have their head checked.

Let's be brutally honest, the entire kiddie club sports/clinics industrial complex is a massive scam. If your kid is not a natural born athlete, all the tens of thousands of dollars spent on sports over the years is as good as lit on fire.

Translation: I can’t afford it and my nebbish meek kids don’t have an athletic bone in their body — if you even have kids

And you’ll be the first one to pull your kid out of school so he can sit all day in an ice rink instead of socializing and being in school because little Johnny from Reston really is THAT good. Lol. TPH spots you from a mile away and they are literally banking on you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ant parent who would consider sending their kid to “ school” at a dilapidated ice center for mediocre DMV hockey really needs to have their head checked.

Let's be brutally honest, the entire kiddie club sports/clinics industrial complex is a massive scam. If your kid is not a natural born athlete, all the tens of thousands of dollars spent on sports over the years is as good as lit on fire.

Translation: I can’t afford it and my nebbish meek kids don’t have an athletic bone in their body — if you even have kids

Tanslation: I spent more than I could afford on kiddie sports and my kids grew up to be middle managers instead of pro athletes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this area is a joke for hockey

No it’s not. It’s just a joke for 16 & 18/19u aaa. There are plenty of kids that leave during high school for northeast boarding schools. Lots of post aaa boys play juniors. The top 14-18/19u aa teams in the dmv are actually pretty good.

I’m sorry but no - the top 14-18/19 AA teams in the dmv are not good at all. The AAA teams are almost as bad. I don’t mean to be snarky but come on. And any kid going into juniors from any of these teams is heading to pay to play juniors team so they can continue to burn money.

The second part is true, but ashburn won a few natties, myha boys and stj girls won one last year. The myha boys, ashburn/reston (where ever the kids decide to play this year) and stj/myha girls are consistently ranked high nationally. Aa hockey is what it is, but as a region we hold our weight.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ pride is a disgrace too. Girls good enough to play ncaa d1 have to leave after their freshman year and go to boarding school, commute to Philly for practice, or homeschool and find another tier 1 team with a weeknd model. It’s a nightmare. I wish USA hockey would step in and allow other assns to start aaa, or at least hold these guys accountable. They shouldn’t be protected like nfl franchises.

As a mother of a female player I desperately want a Virginia AAA girls program. I've heard nothing but bad things about Pride so even if it was closer I don't think we'd play there.

As a parent with multiple kids in this program, I would say that it's like any other program, there are good things and bad things. If you're expecting any kid in this are, girl or boy, to go from AAA to D1 it is a stretch. Not impossible, but clearly a stretch. At the end of the day. One of the big benefits with Pride is that they will get you seen. They go to the right tournaments, and the Director has the connections to get your kid exposure. We heard from multiple coaches in the recruiting process how much they like/appreciate the JWHL model (league run by the Pride director). This is not like some sports, for example lacrosse, where the recruiting process is pretty prescribed and there is a recruiting director. Your kid will have to take the initiative to reach out to people. The director will help advise and talk to coaches when they reach out, but it is incumbent on your child to do the footwork.

That said, at the end of the day, your kid is either a D1 player or not. Probably not. For perspective, a quick review of the eight birth-year girls who started with one of my kids:
- Four went to boarding school, of those three re-classed, of those one is not playing hockey in college, one is likely to play lacrosse, too early to tell on a third. The girl who did not reclass is playing D3.
- For those going to prep school,if you are want to play in college, you have to pay for the cost of prep school as well as Tier 1 hockey, the teams in the northeast play a shoulder season, so very light during the prep season, but you are then having to manage/coordinate logistics for getting your kid from prep school to Tier 1 practices as well as to tournaments/events.
- Prep schools are generally better academically than public if that is where your kids are now, not necessarily better than a private school in this area.
- If your kid is a multi-sport athlete, prep school will allow for them to play multiple sports vs having to drop everything else to participate in Tier 1 in this area
- The other option that is gaining traction is a hockey academy, which functions more like a regular Tier 1 program, playing August - March, like Shattuck/BK/Lovell. These are harder to get into and focused on hockey vs academics. Some are just online school, others regular classrooms, although my understanding is that the education itself is not great.
- Of the four girls my daughter played with who did not go to prep, three are playing D1. The remaining girl ended up dropping hockey to focus on lacrosse Jr year, and is playing D1 lacrosse.

Moral of the story, prep is definitely a pathway, but unless your kid is a D1 player to begin with, prep will not make your kid a D1 player. (With only 40 some D1 women's hockey teams, and 40% of the players coming from Canada/outside the US the bar is very high.) There are certainly advantages in terms of education and exposure, but at significant financial and family time cost. At the end of the day you do what is best for your kid and family in your circumstances, but nothing is a guarantee, and the things that people hate about hockey in he DMV (politics, travel, etc.) are not absent of avoided if you go the prep route. You might be shielded from it a little bit more because of distance, but it's still there.

I would say there is a 0.002% chance of a boy going from AAA to NCAAA hockey. They all play juniors. The ones who play NCAA D1 hockey at 18 come from USNTDP adn they are draft picks. Even prep school kids who play D3 hockey start as juniors.