Over the past few years, ABYHA transitioned to a seven-month evaluation philosophy. We believe measuring development over the course of a full season is a more accurate depiction of a player’s ability instead of just a year-end “try-out”.
Ultimately, we believe our team placement process described below allows us to place players together that share similar skill sets and ability, providing them with the best opportunity of having success and developing a long term passion for hockey.
Evaluation Process
Coach Assessments:
All coaches are asked to complete a mid-season evaluation and a final season evaluation, allowing us to take into consideration each player's full season of progress. This allows us to get a solid sense of where players rank on each of their respective teams. Additionally, our level coordinators meet with the coaches to get a better understanding of each player and their skill level.
On-ice Evaluations:
We find tremendous value assessing players in settings that allow for first and second year players to compete with, and against each other, in various game-like scrimmage formats.
Although each evaluation year and level can be slightly different, listed below is an example of how we may split up and schedule age level evaluation sessions. This is subject to change based on the number of players registered:
Hour #1 - Rosters and schedule for this hour are constructed using the following criteria:
- Alphabetical by last name
Hour #2 - Rosters and schedule for this hour are constructed using the following criteria:
- Full-season coaches’ evaluation
- Evaluation ranking of tryout hour #1
- We anticipate having 2 separate hours of similarly skilled players per age level
Hour #3 - Rosters and schedule for this hour are constructed using the following criteria:
- Full-season coaches’ evaluation
- Evaluation ranking of tryout hour #2
- We anticipate having 2 separate hours of similarly skilled players per age level
Please note that some age levels may only have two hours of on-ice evaluations. Also, Midget aged players may follow a different evaluation process and will have specifics communicated to them through the Midget level coordinator.
Player Placement Decisions:
All player evaluations and rankings are conducted by members of our Board of Directors. In addition to the on-ice evaluation sessions, our evaluators spend time viewing practices and games in person and via LiveBarn.
We ultimately combine all this info with the full season coach evaluations to determine our initial placement recommendations. These initial placements are then presented to all ABYHA coaches for their feedback, and ultimately their voting approval. Our full Board of Directors finalizes these placements with a final vote of approval before we publish to the broader ABYHA community.
Once published, we encourage anyone with questions to reach out directly to our full Board of Directors at board@abyha.org.
Thank you,