>There was a mention in the State College paper that a school in Florida is
>suing the ACHA.  The school is ticked because it isn't the southern rep for
>the ACHA Division II national tournament.  Anyone else heard anything about
>it or have details??
>
>Jen Bortz
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Well, I don't know about this case, but I'll tell everyone what happened
when I coached Purdue.
It was the first year of the ACHA II tourney, 1992.  The tournement was to
be held in Chicago, which is almost Purdue's home ice.  Purdue had played a
bunch of ACHA div. I teams that year and our record was just over .500 but
was about .800 against div II teams.  The so called rankings which
determined who got invited to the tourney came out in mid February and we,
along with most other teams, had several games to play.  Purdue was ranked
12th at the time.  I felt that this was absurd, especially because no one
had even told me, the head coach about the rankings or who voted.  I called
a guy, who I won't reveal his name, who was in charge of the entire ACHA.
I explained to him what I felt and asked him how did the rankings work and
why were the tournement teams picked so early.  He told me a bunch of
things about this and that and how hard it was and that our record wasn't
so good (one caveat here, we sent our score sheets to this guy religously
during the season because he said before the year started that this would
allow him to discern schedule difficulty) and so forth.  I asked him who
determined that we were rated 12th and why wasn't I or a representative of
Purdue included in the voting or at least allowed to lobby.  It came out
that he and he alone decided on the ratings, based on who he liked.  Thank
you.  I then asked him what it tool to get into the tourney.  He said if
some teams declined, then he would go down the ratings untill he got 8
teams who would show.  I never got a call and I later found out that we had
beaten 6 of the 8 teams at the tourney and had swept (I think) 4 of them.
Good ratings huh?  At the next fall Central States Collegiate Hockey League
meeting, I attended in order to ask the league for Purdue's admittance.
The gentleman from the ACHA was there.  During the meeting, as a sidelight,
it came out that he BEGGED Iowa State to send a "JV like" team to the
tourney to fill it out.  Iowa State has a div. I team already and
basically, they have several extra guys and they ended up going to the
tourney at this gentleman's invitation.  I then couldn't hold it in anymore
and I spoke up with my complaint (even though it had nothing to do with div
I or the CSCHL, which is why the meeting was taking place).  Several of the
CSCHL coaches at the meeting agreed with me and the gentleman was on the
spot.  But nothing was or could be done about it as it was spilt milk so to
speak and the guy, at least at that time, ran the ACHA, both div I and II,
by himself.  There was absolutely no accountability for his action at all.
The last thing is that it was clear that college club hockey is run by this
guy and a handful of div I powerhouse coaches.  If you are not in this
circle, forget anything you want done.  Your voice doesn't matter.
If anyone has more info or can add to the story, I would love to follow it.
The whole experience robbed 18 kids of a chance to compete for a National
Championship.  About 6 of these kids were from Chicago and would have
killed to play in their home town.  By the way, the team that won the
tourney, Toledo, was from the league Purdue was in at the time (MCHL) and
we played 3 games against them that season and they were all extremely
tight games.
 
Jim Lawrence                            1986 Ninja 900
[log in to unmask]               1989 Hawk GT
AMA# 645891  DoD# I forget.
"I'm not a nerd, I'm just too busy to be cool right now."