LAWRENCE HOCKEY CLUB: News and Information: Hoosier League Divisions & General High School Hockey Information
Hoosier League Divisions & General High School Hockey InformationIt appears the Hoosier League will not have any divisions this year The following teams will compete
- Brebeuf Bloomington
- Carmel Gold Carmel Blue
- Columbus Park Tudor
- HSE A Cathedral/Chatard
- HSE B Evansville
- Lawrence Zionsville (formerly NC)
- Noblesville South Stars Red
- South Stars Blue
For those of you new to High School Hockey....
Indiana has 4 high school hockey leagues. The central and southern part of the state are covered by the Hoosier High School Hockey League with the teams listed above. Over the years as a group petitioned the Hoosier League to start a team a territory was established for that team to draw from, some teams by choice are only pulled from a particular school, Brebeuf only has players attending Brebeuf. Carmel and HSE have many players in their districts and therefore have more than 1 team. Cathedral and Chatard go together for form 1 team, and in Lawrence many schools feed into our team.
Most teams in the Hoosier League conduct tryouts in the summer or early fall. Generally a team looks for 20 players-18 skaters and two goalies. Extra players are "released" and the names turned over to the Hoosier League. The commissioner of the Hoosier League will assign these cut players to a team which may need additional players to fill their roster. Normally this will be a 1 year assignment and the following year those "released" players will again tryout for their "home" team. Some coaches may give a cut player a "permanent" release which allows that player to stay with a team they joined after being cut for the duration of their high school hockey career.
The Hoosier League discourages players from jumping from team to team and has set out very strict guidelines as to moving from one team to another. Suffice it to say that to move the player must physically move into a new teams district and be attending one of that teams schools. In this event the player actually has a choice to play for their new school or remain with their old team. Once a player starts with a team just changing schools does not necessarily mean they change teams. For instance, if a player started at HSE then changed schools to Cathedral without moving residences then that player remains an HSE player unless released by HSE. For more information on this see the Hoosier League site and "Rule 19".
Fort Wayne is a very big hockey city and has 6 High School Hockey Teams, the site for the FWAHSHL league is http://www.usahockey.com/fort_wayne_area_high/.
Northern Indiana is a hotbed for hockey with 9 good teams playing out of the Michiana High School Hockey League (web site currently not functional) and 4 teams playing out of the Illiana high school hockey league http://www.angelfire.com/sports/illianahockey/. Culver has several midget hockey teams with their lowest level team playing in one of the northern Indiana leagues.
Each season the Hoosier League will crown a regular season champion and host a tournament to determine the Tournament Champion. We will be seeded in that tournament according to our "league" games which were scheduled by our league. Offically we will play each team in our Division of the Hoosier league 2 times and those will be our official "league" games, we may play them more often but those games will be considered "non-league". All the teams in the Hoosier League will be seeded for this single elimination tournament.
All high school teams in the state of Indiana can register to play in the Indiana State Tournament. All the teams applying will be seeded into a class 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, or 5A based upon performance against teams outside their own league in games known as "cross over games". To be seeded a team must play a minimum of 8 games against teams outside their league and failure to play at least 8 seeding games will result in a team automatically playing in the toughest division 5A. The State Association which runs this tournament generally releases the brackets once all the league tournaments are complete. Unlike the Hoosier league single elimination tournament, this is a points tournament. You will play a round robin with the teams in your bracket with the winners of the brackets facing each other for the championship.
Finally, several of the leagues host "pre-post" teams. Think of this as the league's All-Star team. The Hoosier League team is know as the Capitals. These teams will practice and play in a few tournaments prior to the start of our regular season (hence "pre") and after the completion of our regular season (aka "post"). If you are interested in trying out next season check the Hoosier League web site for details.
You can follow all the action for all of these teams at the Indiana State High School Hockey Association web site. We link to this site at several places from our site. http://www.ishshl.goalline.ca/