Last season Nashville’s Southern Flyers Midget 16U AAA team played as an independent in the Southern Youth Hockey League, taking on anyone who had room on their schedule. This year Head Coach Kelly Klippenstein went searching for a place to play where his team could continue to grow and improve.
“We just needed to get into a league,” Klippenstein says, “that will give us a set number of games against all AAA teams and then just go from there.”
|
|
The Southern Flyers will face stiff competition this season as they join the Great Lakes Hockey League. |
Klippenstein found one in the Great Lakes Hockey League (GLHL), which includes teams such as Honeybaked Hockey, the Cincinnati Cyclones, the Motor City Chiefs, the Grand Rapid Griffins, and the Pittsburgh Viper Stars. This season the Southern Flyers will get to match up with some of the best AAA players in the Midwest.
The team would have liked to have had a Southeastern option, but Klippenstein is happy get into a structured program like the GLHL.
“There is no AAA league in the Southeast district at all.” Klippenstein said. “I mean, there are only a few AAA teams to start with. In the Potomac Valley region there’s only the Little Caps, in the Carolinas there’s only the Hurricanes, and in Florida you’ve only got one or two AAA programs. In our area you’ve only got us and THP Thunder AAA Hockey and both teams play independent schedules. We just felt it was a good idea to get associated with a league and I think it will help us, and the whole organization, out.”
At first glance, it might look like joining a Midwestern league would create more travel problems for the team and the parents of Southern Flyers players. But travel is nothing new to this team.
“In the past few years, “Klippenstein says, “we’ve had to play in a schedule where we’ve had to travel a lot anyway, just to get teams to play. Probably the biggest difference is we’ll be traveling the same distances but in a lot of cases we might only play in two league games as opposed to playing in a tournament where we might play in three or four games.”
While they may have to travel more frequently, there will be an advantage to joining a league with an established structure and schedule. This year the Southern Flyers will actually get more opportunities to shine on home ice at Centennial SportsPlex in Nashville, TN.
“There’s no question that there’s a lot of travel.” says Klippenstein. “But actually the big advantage is the fact that it gives us five home weekends where teams come in to play us where in the past, teams from the north, it’s hard to get teams to come down just to play a few games. In the past we’ve not had five home weekends in a season over the last four years. The parents basically are looking forward to it. They want to see how the kids do against the kids in this league.”
That leads to the big question. How will the Southern Flyers compete with the other teams from the GLHL?
“Probably the biggest difference,” says Klippenstein, “is the depths of the teams. The programs up there usually have a lot more kids to pick from. So it puts a little more pressure on our third and fourth lines to try to get them to improve where they can compete. And we’ll see a mix of teams. Some teams will have second year kids only, and there will be some teams that have a mix. We’re a mix of first and second year kids.”
While Klippenstein is realistic about being the new kids on the block, he says the team is looking forward to making their own mark as a southern team in a Midwest league.
“I think that there will be some games that are going to be tough,” Klippenstein said, “like against the Pittsburgh team, that’s the top team in Pittsburgh that is in this league. They’ll be very good. I know that there will be some games that we struggle in and I think that we’ll be competitive in some. But there’ll be some games where we are pretty tough.”
So now the Southern Flyers have a new league to play in, and fans of youth hockey in the Nashville area will get an opportunity to see top level AAA competition. That should be a win-win no matter what the outcome of the games.
|
