This is a copy of an email I sent to the members of the new unnamed non-checking team

I’m going to start this email slightly off topic but it’ll all make sense soon! There’s a fair bit of reading in here but it would be great if you all read it thoroughly and hit reply-all with any input you might have.

Hodge works at SK8 and has talked to Darrin (owner of SK8) today about getting some team uniforms for us. Apparently this shouldn’t be a problem. Hodge isn’t sure yet whether we could keep the uniforms or not but we’ll find out in time I guess. The uniforms would likely have a big SK8 logo on the front. Kyle suggested that a good team colour was orange as this doesn’t clash with any of the current DIHA team uniforms and we’d certainly be noticeable. So that’s the colour uniform Hodge has asked for. I assumed they’d only want to supply us with the crappiest cheapest ones they can find but Darrin is talking about possibly some more expensive ones with two different colours Smile Hodge will work out the details and get back to us once he knows more. If anyone wants to purchase a team uniform to keep permanently then I suggest emailing Hodge about it. Anyhows, back on track, we don’t as yet have a team name, infact we don’t really have much of a plan at all, but a team name would be nice. The reason for the rant about orange uniforms is coz that’ll possibly have an impact on the team name. Team Orange is not good, we’d probably get called the fruity team or something similar. So basically we need some ideas on a team name, SK8 Orange Warriors?, SK8 Manic Mandarins, heck I don’t know. Please hit reply all with any ideas you might have. We’ll probably need SK8 in the title since they’re providing uniforms for us.

Now back to the beginning…this all started coz I’m sick of not having a real team to play for in Dunedin. Every other place I’ve played hockey, be it inline or ice hockey I’ve always had a team which I played with on a weekly basis and usually had proper team trainings for. This doesn’t happen at all in Dunedin, even the DIHA rep. teams rarely play as a team except at tournaments. The SIHL SNC team could have been an option but as yet noone has stepped forward to organise the team and from the outside it looks hideously disorganised. I’m also not keen on playing contact hockey and would like the opportunity to play competitively between the two DIHL seasons. So I thought about a way to form a team which would play every week and had team trainings, was at a decent playing level, only played non-checking hockey and wasn’t full of beginners. With the next DIHL season (starting about August) being split in two, we’re in a perfect situation to organise something for this league now. We can’t just field the best possible team we can as there will be limits on the level of players in each team to prevent complete domination by one team. There’ll be more info. about exactly how the playing levels will be capped once Kyle and I sort out the rules. From what we know about the current DIHL and the likely players who will join in the new season, the team roster which we hammered out last night should be roughly about right, but we won’t know till the new season registrations start. So basically the team we have now may have to change slightly, we’ll just have to deal with that at the time, there’s not much we can do about that. So that’s my spiel about why I’ve tried to set this team up.

Unfortunately, despite all my ideas and motivation to get this up and running, I’m not keen to have anything to do with actually organising it! I’m volunteered out at the moment and really want to avoid having anything to do with organising more hockey stuff. So last night I made sure I got people to agree to do all the random bits of team organising stuff that needs to be done. Below are the jobs and names of those who volunteered for them.

Game organiser: Matt Aitken
For the DIHL it’s easy, we’ll get told when to show up and who we’re playing against. Matt’s job is to organise any non-DIHL games. That means games against the likes of the Dunedin Juniors, Premier team, midgets, SIHL SNC team and other teams we can travel to around the place like Queenstown or Gore. Gore is already keen for us to go down and play them and should be getting back to me with info. about playing us soon-ish. They’re a little slack at replying so who knows when this will be. We could also play against the Canterbury Aardwolves who should be coming down to visit around July. We could also go and play at any of the other rinks around the region, although Christchurch is probably out of the question as they usually have no ice time available for touring teams, plus they’re a bloody long way away. Organising the games will involve asking the team if they want to play (kindof obvious!) and also arranging the ice time and collecting money from the players plus any other crap that needs sorted out to get a game going including sorting out refs if necessary. The ice rink is apparently keen for ice hockey games to be played on Saturday nights around 6:30-7:30pm so this could be a handy time for arranging games against local teams.

Practise organiser: Darcy Knyvett
Darcy’s job is probably the most important right now as we need practises set up before anything else really. Conveniently almost our entire current team has played inline hockey previously. Kyle has contact details for the Caledonian gymnasium for inline hockey trainings. The Caledonian gymnasium is quite small, but has a very nice polyurethaned wooden floor. Of course we are an ice hockey team so ice time is obviously a must as well. There are a few options for ice practises, one is to book our own slot and only have our own players attend, I can’t see this working as the ice costs $150/hr and we only have ~10 confirmed people on our roster plus a few we’re yet to ask to play, at any rate most people can’t afford to pay over $10 just for a practise. So…we could combine with another existing teams practise and split the costs. I’ve spoken to the Dunedin Junior team manager Paul Roth and he thought that we could combine with them, he wasn’t keen on us using one end of the ice while they used the other though, so it would be more of a combined coaching situation. Their practises are on Thursdays at 8pm. The other option is to combine with the Dunedin womens team who I think practise at 8:30pm on a Monday, I haven’t asked them about this and have no idea whether they’d like the idea or not. Both the juniors and women are short on players for their practises though so should be open to the idea I think. The only other option I can think of which Kyle suggested is that we could try and get some ice time early on a Saturday or Sunday morning which he thought may be available for a cheaper price than the regular $150 per hour. Hopefully Darcy can sort something out for this. Email with any suggestions you might have. Darcy also needs to collect the payment for the practises and pass this onto whoever is collecting the ice-time/gym time money.
One major suggestion I have in relation to practises is that we should pay for them in advance, most of the teams in Dunedin end up in the poop as they can’t pay for their ice time when they’re short players one week, if we collect the money in advance, say in 4 week lumps of $40 we’ll be covered even if some players don’t make it, plus any profit can get rolled on to pay for other games, trips etc. It’ll also ensure that our practises are well participated. If everyone paid in $40 per month for practises that would easily cover $75 for an ice practise (assuming we split the costs with another team) and $26 for an inline hockey practise per week.

Team Manager: Tim Honore
Makes sure people turn up to practises and games and generally keeps everyone informed of what’s going on. Needs to make sure that the others are doing their jobs. Also needs to keep the team roster up to date and generally looks after the running of the team.
My own suggestion here is that if for whatever reason Darcy can’t make it to collect practise money’s then Tim fills in this job for him.

Uniform Organiser: Brent Hodge
Hodge sorting out some team uniforms for us. We’d really need the uniforms by August ready for the next DIHL season, but it would be nice to have them before hand as we could use them for whatever informal games Matt organises for us before the DIHL starts.

Coach: Phil Pielak-Jones
When I mentioned Phil’s name the concensus seemed to be a resounding yes that Phil was the right man for the job. I’ll pass on this email to Phil and see what he thinks. I did mention the possibility of a new non-checking team being formed to him a few weeks ago and he was happy to do the coaching. I guess whether he can or not will depend on when the practise time/s is/are.

Social Organiser: unfilled position
Organises anything to do with drinking.

Current team lineup as of last night:
(1) Matt Aitken F aitma377@student.otago.ac.nz 027-634-0850
(2) Stefan King F rookie_19@hotmail.com 027-405-3667
(3) Brent Hodge F hodgee@shaw.ca 027-463-4337
(4) Matt Reay F world606@hotmail.com 027-428-7282
(5) Darcy Knyvett F/D veedubking@msn.com 027-426-3728
(6) Ryan Hellyer F/D ryanhellyer@yahoo.co.nz 021-297-2698
(7) Kyle Matthews F/D kyle.matthews@otago.ac.nz 021-113-0236
(Cool Serge F/D sjanic02@gmail.com 021-254-1029
(9) Tim Honore F/D timhonore@gmail.com 021-160-5430
(10) Julian Munster F/D j_muenster@hotmail.com 021-263-0523

Suggested new recruits: I’ll email these three and see what they think of our plan.
(11) Zanzee Pielak-JonesD
(12) Rob Owens F
(13) Kim Senger F

That gives us 4 forwards, 1 defence and 6 people who don’t seem to care where they play.

We also don’t have a goalie, last night Nick Metzger was suggested as a suitable goalie. We could possibly get Toby Schuck (ex ice black) or Stephen Reid (current ice black) but we may end up having trouble in the DIHL as our team might end up too unbalanced with one of them in goal. Antony Blackett was also suggested but the concensus seems to be that Nick was the man for the job so I’ll pass this email on to him and see what he thinks. He also has contacts with Darrin at SK8 which might help on the sponsorship front.

That’s everything I can think of right now. The first things we need done are for Brent and Darcy to get back to us about uniforms and practises, plus if Matt can start organising some games for us that would be great. Below are some contact details for random people who will be useful in helping organise various things.

Dunedin Womens team manager: Tineke Hendry 027-227-2120 ?????@yahoo.com
Dunedin Juniors team manager: Paul Roth 474-0879 ?????@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Dunedin Ice Stadium Manager: Neil Gamble – ??????? – contact Neil to find out what ice time is available
DIHA secretary: Joyce Miller – contact Joyce to book ice time as she gets a discounted rate via the club ($150/hr instead of $200+).
Dunedin Premier team manager: Steve Jackson I think (could be wrong though) – ????
Gore Ice Hockey Association – Marita and Daryl Soper – ????? – I know both Marita and Daryl though and am happy to coordinate with them directly.
DIHA president: Graeme Sykes – ????????

cheers,
Ryan

PS: We’ll need some team pucks for trainings, anyone keen to approach the club about this? Anyone know of another source of pucks we could use?