I believe that the teams are ranked at the strtof the season and this should be the driving factor. If you are ranked a C at the start and you play a C turnament and blow everyone alway then you need to correct this and go to a B turnament to see how you do. You need to start wth a baseline and work from their. Applying for a ranking will not do anythng; but have teams wasting time and what is the rules for applying that would make it so different. It would be better to force team to play at least 1 tournament out of their zone so all can compare and measure each other up.

My understanding is that Zone 10 (Yes my child plays in zone 10) meets & comes up with ratings. –

By that I mean, just before the ratings deadling, all associations from zone 10 ( i would assume the president and/or rep convenor from each) meet & go over each of their teams.

They look at the teams original ranking at the start of the year & then look at all of their game results to that point.

Then everyone in that room agrees on what rating they think that individula team should have.

After this meeting all of these ratings are put forth to the OLA for their approval.

Is this perfect, probably not as the OLA I’m sure changes some of the ratings, but I would trust that having all zone officials looking at each other’s club result helps keep the proposed rating reccomedations un-biased to a degree

Does any other zone do this??

I’m sure if someone starts to compile all these ideas something has to come out of all this discussion.

If a team doesn’t apply they don’t go. If they don’t provide zone and tourney results, they don’t go. Take the burden off the OLA and put it squarely on the shoulders of those that are currently burning up the OLA Minor Board. The parents.

The ideal would be that every center at every age was striving to become the best team they possibly could and play at the highest level possible. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. That is why it will always be impossible to rate teams in a fashion that will end up pleasing all involved.

Somewhere along the line, some people got it into their heads that winning a C Championship with a B team was a great thing. (run the gamut with all of the letters B-A etc.) You can’t blame the kids, you can’t blame the OLA, and you can’t blame the lower rated teams that play hard for a proper ranking. Who can you blame?

Parents. Most coaches are parents, most bench staff are parents, most center executives are parents. Don’t think for one second that I’ll leave the bleachers alone. Any parent that doesn’t realize that their child is playing below their capability is lost. Any parent that buys into a sandbagging philosophy is worse. I know my son has room on the shelf for another trophy but I wouldn’t want to fill a spot with a sandbag on a piece of wood.

It should be obvious by the OLA Rankings and Provincial results of previous years where most centers will sit. There really shouldn’t be large differences from year to year or at least every two years as age groups move up. Coaching staffs generally stay around the same age group for the playing years of their children. Additions and deletions in lineups will cause some wandering and some players will advance further than others but for the most part you wont see major shifts. Any glaring exceptions should be very obvious. Yes, once they get to Provincials it is too late to change anything, but it will give you the opportunity to see the trend.

The ideas above are great. In my personal opinion a team should be given the chance to appeal to a higher ranking but not a lower one. If you want to play better lacrosse, great, if you want to take advantage of kids with a current ability level below yours, too bad.