Information
on Tournaments for 2007
Potential
Season Schdule for Mad Dog For 2007 (Word)
Potential
Season Schdule for Mad Dog For 2007 (PDF)
National Inline Associations
that host and/or sanction Tournaments below:
USA Hockey Inline:
www.usahockey.com/inline/main/home/
This is one of America’s largest inline associations.
The quality of play is a notch down from the other associations
because USA Hockey attracts a lot of "select"
teams that originate from a house league. However, that
is changing as they have now eliminated the rule that
a team must be connected to a house league in order
to be eligible to play at their events. As a result,
the competition at USAHIL will go up a notch but I’m
sure they will continue to have different talent brackets
at the nationals. They have an alliance with NARCH.
AAU:
www.aauhockey.org
The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) came
along and rescued USARS from obscurity, merging to form
one inline association. While the roots of both groups
are very old, the merger is fairly new. The quality
of play is medium to high and there are regional and
national championships held by both groups even though
they are the same group. They have separate web sites
but both refer to each other. It is a confusing relationship.
However, it is this merged group that is recognized
by the U.S. Olympic Committee for the purpose of assembling
national teams to compete internationally. AAU is the
sponsor of the Junior Olympics, now recognized as one
of the premier inline hockey events in the country.
They have an alliance with TORHS.
USARS:
www.usarollersports.org
USARS stands for United States Amateur Roller Sports
and for the last 100 years was the sole sanctioning
body for roller dance, roller speed, and roller hockey
(on the old quad skates). When they failed to recognize
inline skates as a new development for roller hockey,
its hockey program nearly died. Then AAU came along
and merged with them, giving them new life. They don’t
have regionals since the AAU regionals serve as qualifiers
for the USARS Nationals. The quality of play is medium.
They have an alliance with TORHS.
NARCH:
www.narch.com
This is America’s first inline hockey association
and is the highest quality. It attracts hard core year-round
clubs that are mostly sponsored by equipment manufacturers.
This is the pinnacle of inline hockey. They have regionals
and a national championship.
TORHS:
www.Torhs.com
Similar to NARCH, Tournament of Roller Hockey Series
(TORHS) is a high quality inline association that attracts
many of the best club teams. They have regional championships
and a national championship. Some people regard the
TORHS nationals as the best inline event of the year.
The quality of play is very competitive.
2Hot4Ice:
www.2hot4ice.com
This is a fairly new organization that is affiliated
with USA Hockey Inline. They operate predominantly in
the South and Mid-West and will have 10-15 regional
qualifiers each year leading to a national championship.
The quality of play is medium but heir events are well
organized and a lot of fun.
Top Cat:
www.topcathockey.com
These are tournaments organized by a for-profit
tournament organizer who got her start organizing inline
tournament in California 20 years ago. Even today, most
of its events remain on the west coast. However, in
recent years, she has begun to have a few events each
season somewhere in the Northeast. The play at Top Cat
Tournaments is very high and its Western tournaments
are typically attended by the best inline teams in the
nation.
East Coast Hockey Organization (ECHO):
www.echohockey.com
ECHO attracts mostly club teams and has regionals and
a national championship. It is primary an East Coast
organization. The quality of play of low to medium.
NHL Rules:
http://nhl.com/laceemup/hockeyrules/index.html
The NHL sponsors an inline tournament in every NHL city
and the first two finishers qualify for a national championship.
The quality of play is usually of lower quality and
the best inline teams do not usually compete at NHL
Rules tournaments unless it is close by and used to
prepare the team for other tournaments.
State Wars:
www.statewarshockey.com
This event was conceived by a group a long time inline
hockey organizers who thought it would be a neat thing
if each state organized an inline team composed of hopefully
the best players from throughout the state, and then
had a national tournament to determine the best state
team. Now in its second year, the event appears to be
a success. This event has the support of AAU, NARCH,
TORHS, USAHIL – virtually the entire inline hockey
world. This is not an event a team would attend; any
person can sign up to tryout for their state team.
Web Sites that
List Inline Tournaments
www.inlinehockeycentral.com
www.hockeytournaments.com
http://eteamz.active.com/njrh/calendar/
Potential
Tournament Schedule for Mad Dog Teams
Potential
2006 Season Schdule for The Mad Dogs
Tentative Calendar for the Mad Dogs
Explanatory Notes:
This is not a listing of every event Mad Dogs teams
should participate in but rather a list of all our options.
It is up to each team to decide which events to attend.
Most of the tournaments listed are regional qualifiers
for a national championship of some kind. You usually
have to place in the top two at a regional to proceed
to a national championship but you don’t have
do go to the nationals even if you qualify. The Mad
Dog 12U team qualified for seven different national
championships last year but only attended two of them.
If the goal is to qualify for a particular national
championship but your team fails to qualify at the regional
in question, you are allowed to enter another regional
and take another shot at qualifying. There is often
more than one regional qualifier in a region.
In order to get sponsored by a major hockey equipment
company, we will have to have some teams place high
at either NARCH or TORHS. These tourneys are the pinnacle
of inline hockey. If your team is an “older year”
team in the age bracket, and early tournaments indicate
the team is very strong, then I would suggest that you
consider attending one of them, assuming the team qualified
at the respective regional.
The dates given for many tournaments are for all age
divisions combined. Typically, your one age group will
have only scheduled 1-2 days at a regional and 2-3 days
at a national.
Bear in mind that if your top players are invited to
try out for the national team and is selected, you may
not want to attend any tournaments that conflict with
the international competitions the national teams will
participate in such as the World Cup.
Dates and places change frequently in the inline world.
The team manager always needs to be checking the web
sites to make sure the tournaments you plan to attend
are still on.
Some tournaments have membership requirements. To participate
in AAU, for example, all players much sign up to be
AAU members ($12 last I checked). USA Hockey Inline
requires all players to be members AND to be attached
to a USA Hockey Inline sanctioned league, which the
Mad Dogs are.
For our younger year teams, you may want to consider
tournaments that are less competitive than others.
Here’s how I rank the tournaments:
Most competitive: NARCH, TORHS
Middle of the road: AAU, USA Hockey Inline, Triple Crown
Least competitive: NHL Rules, ECHO, 2hot4ice
There are a slew of other “independent”
tournaments that are not sanctioned or aligned with
any of the national inline organizations. They’re
not qualifiers for anything. They are typically hosted
by an inline rink or league and can be a lot of fun.
However, then tend to be notch less competitive than
the tournaments I’ve listed here. Nonetheless,
if you feel your team would benefit from competing in
one of these tournaments, these are the rinks that are
well known for hosting independent tournaments. They
are all within 2-4 hours drive time from Loudoun County:
Tab Ramos Sports Center (Aberdeen, NJ) www.tabramossportscenter.com
Flyers Skate Zone (Atlantic City, NJ)
www.flyersskatezone.com
Susquahanna Sports Center (Harrisburg, PA)
www.susq-sports.com
Williamsburg Sports Center (Williamsburg, VA)
www.thewisc.com
Slapshotz (Fredericksburg, VA)
www.slapshotz.com
International Sports Center (Cherry Hill, NJ)
www.intsports.com
United Sports Training Center (Downingtown, PA) www.go2ustc.com
Good Sports USA (Allaire, NJ)
www.goodsportsusa.com
Action Sports Center (Pottstown, PA) www.actionsportsonline.com
