Politics in Sport? A Blog from one of my students

"I recently got cut from the Pownal Red Devils in the Junior C league here on P.E.I. Now, in the 2 pre-season games I played I got 2 assists and my +/- was a solid +2, not to mention last season I played for the King County Kings in the Midget AAA league, so my stats kind of spoke for themselves. I was interested in why I got cut from this team. So I asked the coach why I got cut from the team.

He said that it actually has nothing to do with my skill level, it was because his team wasn’t aloud to take me because 9 years ago I started playing minor hockey for the Morell Mustangs in Atom (after the St. Peter’s Minor hockey Association folded forcing me to play hockey elsewhere.) I personally think this is ridiculous, I mean, what happened to the old days where people played where ever they felt they wanted to, now I’m forced to play for Morell (assuming the coach will take me) and I’d really rather leave.

Lets be honest, if I wanted to drive 3 hours twice a week to play for the Tignish Aces and they wanted me on their team, I should be aloud to play there, because it’s junior hockey, you don’t see the P.E.I. Rocket being made up entirely of Islanders, why? Because they’re a junior team looking to make the best team they can so they can win, sell tickets to their games and make money.

As for the players, I should have the right to play where I can be on a good team, get my fair share of ice time and most of all get treated with respect. All of which will get over looked here in Morell. This is the reason I want to leave, not coaching, not the players, but for those 3 reasons.

That’s why I think that the P.E.I.H.A. rules are flawed in this sense, not only will it make me as a player feel better about my team, seeing I picked my own team, but it will make the league as good as it possibly can be because you’ll have the best players moving around and more distributed.

This is why I think P.E.I.H.A should change some of their rules determining this matter, because the players deserve more, the teams deserve more, and the fans deserve more. Please make the junior leagues better by this."