Underwater Rugby - Our first go!
Today the first underwater rugby game in BC playing with official CMAS rules and an official red ball from Germany was played in Oak Bay Recreation Centre in Victoria BC.
Highlights of the game include:
The Blue team led by Nick the Brit faking a handoff and scoring an open net goal on Big Jim. Nick was his usual self showing strategy and unsurpassed conditioning that led his blue team to ultimate victory.
The ladies: Sarah, Melissa and Pattie proved that coeds belong in this spot. Sarah disregarded the fourth commandment and pushed off her father’s chest with both her feet while holding the ball with a vice grip. Patti gripped the ball like a barnacle causing minute long underwater scrums that exhausted everyone. Melissa was in the mix and did not back down from any tussle what-so- ever, even after a midnight nursing shift..
Andrew amazingly managed to push a ball into the goal with Big Jim giving him a Heimlich maneuver and blocking the goal with his big old old bod.
Stuart got a break away goal on Nick and was in on every play. Stuart’s arms encircled his opponents like a hungry giant squid looking at supper.
So much fun was had by all, that folks want to continue with this game. A big thanks to Big Jim for his ferocity and for his generosity in covering pool costs. Way to go guys!
February 25th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Sorry, I don’t know how to post a news item so i just responded to the latest one. Women/girls, this is for you; please read this thread about womens’ hockey at the National level and let me know what you think. You opinion will shape womens’ competative and club hockey in Canada.
Patrik
RE: Moving forward
I agree with Jerrilin.
Ideally, a separate women’s division with something like 6 teams would be absolutely great, of course! But right now, it would be great if just another women’s team would form. But I’m not sure motion 2 is best now, and I’ll explain my point of view by this scenario, which is quite plausible in my opinion.
For next Nationals, there will likely be the Amazones team. Then, if we want to have other women’s team, the women from Rimouski (2?), Montreal (2?), Ottawa (4?) would have to join to form a team, and then the rest of the Ontario women + those from the West would make a third team. (This is just an hypothesis, as I’m not so sure how many women play where.)
That might be cool, but
1) All those women might prefer to play with their own club (which isn’t what we want people to do for Nationals?)
2) What happens if a club really need its women because there are not enough players to form a team?
3) If, for example, your club as a team of 4 men and 4 women, and another club has the same situation, will people from both team want to separate and play with people they don’t know, rather than just be with their own regular teammates? (which is also less complicated to organize)
4) Who will take the lead and form these teams?
It seems a bit complicated from my point of view. If you feel I’m wrong, let me know!!!
At Nationals in Victoria, where we were 6 women + 2 men, I’m not sure how hard we would have worked to be just women together (we did work hard to be 6 women! But maybe if we knew that we HAD to be all women to win the title, we might have worked harder, I cannot say.). Also, if we had chosen to be just women, I’m not sure these men would have come at all.
If you really think that the women will get in touch with each other and form their own team, then motion 2 is fine with me. But I’m afraid that people will just ask no question and play with their own clubs.
I’m willing to try, though, if I know that at least 1 woman from the East and 1 from the West can take the lead and try to form other teams.
And about forcing people to play in the women’s division, if we have motion 2, it’s irrelevant. If we keep the women’s division separate, I’m willing to give up motion 2B, but if we find out that a significant number of the women won’t play, then I would bring it up again. If it remains the exception, then I’m ok to remove it.
I’m also not sure about the mixed division. I would prefer if we try to have all women’s teams. But I haven’t played a lot of tournaments with mixed teams, so maybe someone else could comment on that.
Bye!
Cathie
All of this may be fine IF the number of women playing the sport in Canada actually warrants it. But I fear that we don’t have the numbers to do anything really drastic. John, can you get the membership numbers for us - i.e. how many women do we actually have?
—– Original Message —–
From: Sebastien Falardeau
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 4:35 PM
Subject: RE: Moving forward
Hi all,
Here is Montreal’s comment on all of this.
First and foremost, we find that the actual system for women (playing in the Open and having their little thing on the side) does NOT work. Why ? Because of what was mentioned by
Vero : There has been no progress what so ever in the last years with regard to women’s hockey
Cathie : it’s not a serious division
Cheryl : The reasons some of our players attend nationals aren’t always about the hockey, they may like the city, want to go clubbing or shopping, whatever. Often the women from here choose not to participate in the extra womens games/womens division because they don’t want to have to deal with logistics of different game times.
By the way, on a personal note, I didn’t know about what Cheryl is bringing up, but I find it very sad and I’m not about to put forward a motion encouraging this kind of behavior.
And we had to this that the actual system separates too much the elite women from the rookie ones. What a rookie girl sees is that their role models run away to an Open team instead of nurturing them and fight with them. They see that they must rely on some B men to support them in tournaments. Tournament is where team spirit is forged ! We sometime merge with lonely Quebec players to far and away tournaments and we always love the opportunity !
And to respond to Jer’s comment that “I’m not aware of that many women who opt out of the women’s games” I would respond that the casualities are not always seen poolside … I know some rookie women that stayed home because they find A & B division too rough, but would have loved to play in a real Women division (not a 2 or 3 games thing).
Now that being said (that any change is better than status quo), we are open to many of the suggestions mentioned.
- If we choose to maintain the fact that the women can play in two divisions, then Montreal is all for AGM’s motion 2B (to 2F) that states that : For the Canadian National Championships, women must play first in the Women’s division. They can, if they want, play in another division, but they must be registered in the Women’s division. Otherwise it will just stay the same for another 10 years.
- John’s motion 2 seems good too. We recognized Cathie’s fear but like Cheryl says, we think the solution is to look for single women (it seems there is a lot of those in Open teams) in the nearby cities (then provinces, then geographical neighborhood …) instead of falling back on 2 or 3 guys.
In other words, if playing in the women division before the open division (2 divisions scenario) or forming an all-women team to compete for the Women National Title (pool scenario) isn’t motivation enough, then we’re sad to say that we don’t think the women deserve a division or title of their own.
Seb
P.S. Our conclusions may seem harsh to some of you, but believe me when I say we are in this discussion to try to change this to actually help women’s hockey. To us, status quo is not an option.
——————————————————————————–
From: John Harland
Sent: February 18, 2008 11:33 AM
Subject: Moving forward
Hi all,
I hope you all had a good time at the Calgary or Montreal or MSU tournament. I’ve been tinkering a bit with the sample schedules for teams sizes (from 4 to 20 teams), to include my first guess at the ‘order of preferences’ for the pool system.
I’d like to throw out the first set of motions to present at the AGM. I don’t expect these are the finalized motions, but it seemed like there should be a motion on each of these issues, so I thought I’d put the framework out there for us to start with.
Motion 1:
If there are 8 or more teams at Nationals, the tournament format will be a pool system first to determine groupings, and playoffs within these groupings. There will be 2 cross-over games between each of the groupings to allow movement between groupings before the playoffs. See attached table for proposed formats.
Motion 2:
‘Division teams’ (women’s teams, U19 teams and U15 teams) will compete within the tournament as any other team. If they are completely comprised of players that qualify for the given division throughout the tournament, these teams will compete for the national championship within their division. If there is one team, it will be acclaimed the national champion. If there are 2 or 3 teams, one playoff game between the top two teams will take place, in addition to the regular tournament playoffs. If there are 4 or 5 teams, these teams will be seperated out after groupings play, to play their own playoffs. If there are more than 6 teams, these teams will be seperated out of the regular tournament play in their own grouping after the pool play.
Motion 3:
The format of nationals will be determined by the tourament organizers, based on attendance and available pool time. However, to create consistency from year to year, the ‘order of preference’ of tournament formats is:
Preference 1 - All games 15 minute halves, timeouts in the playoffs.
Preference 2 - Pool games, 15 minute halves; Grouping A, 15 minute halves; Grouping B, minimum of 12 minute halves; Playoffs, 15 minute halves with timeouts.
Preference 3 - Pool games, min 12 minute halves; Grouping A, 15 min halves; Grouping B, min 12 min halves; playoffs, 15 minute halves with timeouts.
Preference 4 (minimum permissible without consultation with CUGA executive) - Pool games, min 12 minute halves; Grouping games, min 12 min halves; playoffs, 15 min halves with timeouts.
In all preferences, there is also 2 cross-over games between each grouping before playoffs (min 12 minute halves), and up to 3 exhibition games (elite, women’s, juniors) if requested, with min 12 minute halves.
Let me know what you think. I haven’t cross-checked this with all the motions yet, so let me know if there are motions that are not addressed by this. If you have a lot to comment on, feel free to address these one motion at a time. As I mentioned in the beginning, these likely should be addressed individually, but I thought it would be good to put all of them down to begin with.
Thanks,
John
——————————————————————————–