Hello Everyone!
Welcome to an exciting year with Cambridge Minor Hockey's Novice division! This weekend is the start to Novice House League. A Coach will be contacting you this week with times for your child to show up on Saturday and Sunday. Please arrive 30 mins prior to their start time so we have enough time to hand out jerseys and socks.
Since we have a smaller division with only three teams, we will not be holding an evaluation weekend for Novice at the start of the season.
Hockey Canada mandates a 3:1 practice to game ratio as a guide line for us to follow for development. Since CMHA does not have the ice time to coordinate this, we will be using the ice times in the month of October as our development stage. The first hour will have 2 teams utilizing the full ice with stations set up for developing different skills. The 2nd hour will be one team utilizing the full ice on their own. The teams will rotate thru the schedule. By the beginning of November, each team will have had 2 full ice practices on their own. At the end of October the teams will be evaluated to make sure they have developed as equally as possible. At this time we may move some players onto another team to even out strengths and/or weaknesses. In November, we will bring in the half ice segment. It will go down to one hour of ice on each day. Two teams will play a game on half of the ice with a Referee present and the 3rd team will have a half ice practice. Again, the schedule will rotate thru the teams. Since we only have 3 teams, 1 team will play two games a weekend.
After January 15th, we will go into full ice games and practices. The full ice phase will help the players transition into Minor Atom for the following season. I am also hoping to coordinate some exhibition games with other centers to add some variety to the weekend.
Christmas - I am looking into doing a small Jamboree for the Novice players. I know Waterloo holds a Novice Jamboree over Christmas. I may see if we can join them since we have a small division. This is all in the planning stages and I will update you when I have more information.
We still need a Head Coach for the 3rd team. We have 2 young men who have stepped up as Trainer and Assistant Coach. I am hoping someone is willing to take this on. We will also need some parent volunteers to help out thru October on the ice. Hopefully, you will see how much fun it actually is. If you have never coached a team of any kind before, here is your chance. You can learn along side your child and share the experience.
We are hoping to also have a Novice Select team. We will need a Head Coach and Bench Staff for the team if there is enough interest.
Thank you!