The Bench Staff

When I was growing up playing minor hockey our team had a coach and an assistant coach.  But these days all teams have a bench staff.  Starting right from Day 1 with 5&6 year old's playing their first year hockey, there's still a bench staff.  All bench staff are permitted to participate and make up your 'on-ice helper' staff. 

Believe it or not, I could make the argument that it's required more at this age than any other age.  These kids get DISTRACTED easily and you'll need all the help you can get.  

Below is the email I sent out to those parents that showed an interest in helping.  Please feel free to copy/paste any or all of this email, I hope it helps. 

For insurance purposes our association has limited the bench staff to seven people in total (some exceptions).  In my case, I had 13 parents ask to be involved, and now needed to somehow choose who would make up the bench staff.  I did not relish telling parents that wanted to participate on the ice with their kids, that they could not.  Here's what I did ...
______________________________________________________________________

Hi All,

If you are receiving this email, it's because you've shown interest in being an on-ice helper.  Thanks again to everyone for all your interest.  This proves to me that I have a great group of parents with me on this team.     

All coaches have now received clarity on this rule (on-ice helpers) from the league convener.  We are only allowed to have 7 helpers on the ice.  We were also told that the SMHA will be strictly enforcing this rule for insurance purposes, and there will be no exceptions.

***This does not apply to this weekend however.  If I asked you to help out this weekend, then help out this weekend. ***   

I have to say, I am very disappointed.  I was hoping to be able to juggle helpers around so anyone that wanted to participate could participate.  But unfortunately I have to submit names on a form shortly (coming days/weeks) and it will be a fixed list of insured people.

At first I thought, I'll make it easy on myself, I'll just pick the first people to offer, but then realized that's not really fare because not everyone is in a position to check their email anytime they want.  So, to be fare with everyone I decided the best way to move forward is to put the kids first, they are the priority.  Having enough people that can commit every week to every practice so we have enough to run drills is basically how I am deciding, and also if you have committed to do extra help by being an assistant coach, trainer or manager.  So all that being said, obviously we all have lives and things come up from time to time, but generally speaking, if you are going to be an on-ice helper that means you need to commit to every week.  So if there is an outside reason why you cannot fully commit, then I'd ask you to allow someone else to step into the spot.

Please email me back letting me know if you still want a spot or if you cannot commit.  If I still have too many then I'll draw straws or something.   

Here is what I have right now for the people allowed on the ice after this weekend, most teams will be a total of 7, we're allowed 8:

Head Coach - Chris (insured position)
Assistant Coach - Andy (insured position)
Trainer - Jim G (insured position)
Manager - ***OPEN*** (insured position) - if you commit to team manager, but cannot come every weekend I will still offer you this spot
Helper 1 - Nicole (insured position) - the only mommie that has volunteered :-)
Helper 2 - Jim L (insured position) - a very experienced coach that we can all learn from
Helper 3 - ***OPEN*** (insured position)
*Freebie - Darren (insured position) - Darren is permitted because he is also a novice assistant coach.  If you are helping on another team within our association then you are already covered by insurance.  Apparently that's an exception, even though they say "no exceptions".

I hope everyone can appreciate my position.
Chris