Ice Time - A shortage of it.

First of all, I would like to thank Andria for her assistance and her
help allowing me to post my thoughts on this issue.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Todd Erskine and I am the
coach/general manager for the Brock Women's Ice Hockey Team. We started
our program in January 1999, and are excited to be heading into the OUA
league for the 2000-2001 season.

What I have experienced in the past year and a half is something that I
have always thought has a large impact on women's hockey. The issue is
that of shortage of ice time.

Currently, we have been practicing at 11pm three nights a week. This is
the earliest ice time we have been able to get. This has been tough for
our players, as getting to bed around 1am and having to get up for a
full day of class is tough. The other aspect is that of acquiring game
ice. Moving into the OUA, we are required to get 11 home dates at prime
time for the regular season. To acquire this ice time I applied to 27
arenas withing the Niagara Region to ensure that I could get these 11
dates.

The responses have been good and bad.

What I want to get out of this is a discussion from any
player/coach/administrator to hear about the good and the bad of
experiences they have had in acquiring ice time. I would be interested
to see if people believe that this is a barrier in their region. For
us, the shortage of ice time in the Niagara Region is unbelievable.

I would like to point out that some arena managers have been excellent
with us, and it is a pleasure working with them. However, on the flip
side, there have been other arena managers who have been difficult to
work with.

Anyone interested in contacting me can do so at brockhockey@hotmail.com
I would love to hear your stories/thoughts/opinions on this subject.

I want to clarify my position on the subject. I am not here to bash the
current organizations and users of the arenas in the Niagara Region.
They are entitled to the current ice time they get. The issue that I
have is that more arenas need to be built in the region. With the
excellent growth of women's hockey, I have the opinion that this will
be true in other areas, where women's teams will need better ice time
and the only way to get that is the increase in the number of arenas.

Also I would like to thank the following people, who are exceptional
people and have "found" ice time for our team when there didn't seem
like there was a possibilty:

Geoff Crane      Merriton Lions Arena
Bill Riddle      Thorold Arena
Val              St. Catharines Arenas
Reg Redshaw      Welland Arenas
Harry Jeshke     Cobourg Arenas (for arranging a tourney for us)
Mary Maybee      Ridley Arena
Brian Deroshiers Fort Erie Arenas

Sincerely,

Todd Erskine
Head Coach, Brock University
todd_erskine@hotmail.com