Okanagan Hockey Group has made some Team changes for the Okanagan Hockey Academy for the coming 2023-2024 season.
U17 Prep Division
As shared last week, our league, the CSSHL, has decided to combine the U16 Prep and U17 Prep levels into a single division for the 2023/2024 season. You can read the full announcement by the league here: https://www.csshl.ca/csshl-announces-new-u16-u17-prep-division-structure.
In order to have the team name better reflect the division the team will be playing in, our U16 Prep team will now be known as OHA U17 Prep Black. Our current U17 Prep team will continue to be known as OHA U17 Prep.
So, what does this mean for how we will be building our OHA teams for the coming season? Truthfully, very little is changing in how we are building next year’s rosters.
Our U18 Prep will continue to be our flagship team, made-up of the top players in our academy. Our U17 Prep team will be the next best 19 players – primarily grade 11 students, with some exceptions.
Our U17 Prep Black team will continue to be primarily grade 10 students with up to 3 overage players (grade 11).
The intent behind the league changes to the division is to create a more competitive, like-on-like game schedule. With this in mind, Our U17 Prep Black team will likely be playing against the 2nd U17 Prep teams from other academies (formally U16 Prep teams). In showcase events the U17 Black team will start in the 3rd pool with all the other formally known (U16 teams) with the ability to move to the 2nd pool based on their success, to play middle/bottom end U17 teams for more competitive games. The U17 Prep team would start in the top pool based on their success last season and the expectation that they would stay in the top pool for the season.
U17 Female Prep Name Change
We have decided to change the name of our U17 Female Prep team. The team will now be known as OHA U18 Female Prep Black. As with the U16 Prep team above, we wanted the name to better reflect the division the team plays in.
Our U18 Female Prep team will continue to be the flagship team for the Female Program while the U18 Female Prep Black team will continue to be our development team.
If you have any questions regarding the above changes, please feel free to reach out to me at scottmay@okanaganhockey.com.