Greetings, The 2017 season for Girls Box Lacrosse, overall, was a very successful one. It started out with a big early disappointment of the folding of the Novice team. This was due to a number of issues. Most notable being the lack of other centres supporting the sport at that age group. The only other centre that attempted to field a team was Milton which ended up folding. All of the girls I spoke to throughout the season and afterwards told me about the fun they had this year and a very high percentage of athletes plan on returning next year and also are tyring to recruit more of their friends to join next season. Our four age divisions participated in two tournaments, plus provincials. We hosted LAX Angels girls box tournament in May and the Six Nations Girls Tournament in Ohsweken un July. We represented the sport and our association very well at Provincials. The Intermediate B team coached by Rob Howey brought home a Silver Medal and the Midget A team coached by Grant Potocky brought home our very first Gold Medal in the A division! We have a few ideas to help promote the earlier ages' interest in the sport. We are planning on having a Novice House League (non-rep/travel) where we can focus on promoting player development with the endgoal of moving into Rep/Travel at PeeWee age. We, as an association, are always open to new ideas to help promote the sport. If you have any, feel free to reach out to me directly at any time. Lastly, I would like to give a HUGE Thank You to all of the volunteers that helped run the program this year. That includes coaches, assistant coaches, trainers, managers, and most of all the parents. See you in 2018! Andrew 2017 Great year in Girls Field Lacrossse. Registration numbers continue to grow. 4 th overall in registration numbers in OWFL (1 of 2 with increased numbers from last year). All teams performed well at provincials. U13 team ended up ranked 5 th in the province with very close games against top 4 teams. U9 and Little Laxers continues to be largest age group in terms of registrations.
Development of coaching manuals to ensure all players/coaches are on the same page was a big success and will continue in 2018. Host weekend was a hit! Bid to host provincials in 2018 and 2019 was put forward at OWFL SAGM. Board in unanimous in its support of bid. Announcement will be made at AGM in November. Turnout at Try Before You Buy day at Bechtel was good but not a lot of new players. First year with KW United tents. KW Girls Field Lacrosse coach of the year was Andrea Broderick (U11). 2018 Looking to host 2 weekends (June 8 crossover weekend and Provincials July 25-29. Introduction of first house-league program May 3-June 28 (9 weeks) 4 Divisions Little Laxers (aged 5 and under) -U9 (ages 6-8) -Junior (ages 9-12) -Intermediate (ages 13 and up) Once a week on Thursdays Will require officials and coaches. Will look to host an umpire clinic to get certified officials for HL. Will encourage older players and parents to coach Budget will need to reflect fees for officiating and field time. Looking to book field time at Westmount fields 1 and 2 to accommodate HL
Rep teams If necessary, Tryouts will run on Sundays indoors at Bechtel Park. Players will be charged a tryout fee to offset costs of indoor field rental Players released from Rep team will be released to HL Second teams will be added if there is enough interest/support (coaching staff) Equipment New uniforms for U11. Goggles, sticks, T-shirts for Little Laxers and U9. T-shirts for coaches and helpers. Pinnies for HL Awesome Lax Would like to start sessions for winter. Will require field rental and honorarium for session leaders Scheduling: We are requesting 3 hours (6:00pm to 9:00pm) of field time Tuesdays and 5 hours (6pm-9pm on Field 1 and 6pm-8pm on Field 2) Thursdays. Registration: Early bird discount until Day after Feb Family Day Sessions. Players will register as houseleague players. If they want to tryout for rep, they must pay an additional tryout fee. If they are successful in making the rep level team, there will be additional rep fees paid to association as well as team fee. Split houseleague registration into 4 catagories: Little Laxers 2013-2015 (includes stick for first time registrants and goggles for all registrants).
U9 ages 2010-2012 (includes stick for first time registrants and goggles for all registrants). Junior ages 2006-2009 Intermediate 2000-2005 Rep Divisions: U11 birth years 2008-2009 U13 birth years 2006-2007 U15 - birth years 2004-2005 U19 - birth years 2000-2003 Senior - birth years 1999 and earlier Registration fees will need to cover costs of inclusions (Shorts, T-shirt, Pinnie, Officials, etc) Try Before you Buy: Family Day sessions at indoor facility. Uniforms Need new for U11 May need a few supplementals to update stock for other teams.
AGM House League Report 2017 By Andria Porter HL Director We had a great 2017 season. For me, being my first year, was a learning experience. I want to thank everyone for their time, patience and helping me navigate the season. Even though challenging at times I was happy to know everyone was there to help me have a very successful season. Very much appreciated. Thank You! The decision to have Leo and Nick Strous join Kitchener Waterloo Braves had a tremendous positive response from the HL Coaches. Many of the volunteer coaches, some whom have never coached or played the sport themselves, felt like they had the support and guidance needed to feel comfortable coaching their own team for the season. All Coaches and players expressed their enthusiasm in having them back next year. Something the board may strongly need to consider for the upcoming season. My suggestion is to have more hours dedicated to the older teams. Many of the coaches expressed to me that there wasn't enough time spent with Leo or Nick, especially before the year end tournament. My suggestion would be to have the hours stretched out over the season and have dedicated coaches for the younger players. There needs to be a program in place that supports the Bantam age group, age level 13-21 and up. As of now there is nothing in place to support this age group and we are losing these players to other clubs. Team Evaluations played a big part on how and where the players were placed on a team. For me Safety was important. We had the players ranked from 1-5 based on Cradling, Ground Balls, Passing/Shooting, Catching and Defense. Experienced coaches from the past helped out with this. Marg and I tried our best, to place the kids evenly and fairly across teams. I believe more than 90% of same team requests were met based on ranking, but we could not accommodate the remaining few. This posed a problem with parents, carpooling and friends playing with friends. My suggestion would only to be we meet the one player request and also state that even this isn't a guarantee because evaluations should take precedent. Team Placement as follows: Tyke: 3 teams between 11-12 players Novice: 3 teams between 11-16 players
PeeWee: 6 teams between 12-14 players I want to thank Karen for stepping in and looking after the younger age groups and arranging all the schedules for the final tournament. This was a big help! Having a child playing Rep I simply could not be in two places at once...thanks Again Karen! I believe it is imperative to have a parent/player education night. It would be dedicated to teaching the parents and players about proper conduct during the game. Especially for those who believe that this is a hockey tournament. Proper cross-checking techniques, what the Refs call mean and stick handling could be beneficial for everyone. An educational video with key speakers, such as Leo and Nick and Wilmont Wilds players could come in and educate, so we could have a safe and successful season for our players. My goal this year was to have enough kids feeling confident in their ability to compete for a spot on any Rep team in any season they wish to pursue. Speaking with the kids throughout the season I found most of them had that confidence needed to do so. Team photos were a hit. Most of the parents that I spoke with were pleasantly surprised when they received a great keepsake for their child. Even though communication broke down at one point I now know the proper procedure. My apologies everyone! Kyle the photographer was great to work with. Pricing could be better. Kyle had suggested us booking him early next year if we choose to go with him again. He did rearrange his schedule to accommodate our club. He even dropped the photos off personally to make sure we got them on time. I would strongly suggest working with him again, next season. He was great with the kids especially the little ones and took no time to get everything set up and his job done. We had the opportunity to work with a large number of players from neighboring cities this season. A Cambridge parent wanted to keep all the Cambridge hockey players on one team and I had to strongly suggest that this would not be a good fit for our Kitchener players. I felt it would be best to integrate the teams based on evaluations. Moving forward this season my opinion would be to have all the players coming in from other cities fall under the KWMLA Braves banner.
HL Novice was a concern this year because there had been a rush of Cambridge Novice that had to registered last minute. There should also be a clear cutoff date for registrations. I found that most hockey players season overlapped our lacrosse season and for most of the game days players were missing due to hockey and we did not have full teams. Lacrosse parents were not too happy and felt their child was at a clear disadvantage. At one point we had to forfeit a game because of this. For next season I would like to see a week gap in between the Rep. 2 team selections and HL evaluations. We had so many Rep. 2 team players come out to evaluations because they didn't know if they were on the Rep 2 team. It created extra work evaluating them placing them on the teams only to have to pull them and re-adjusting teams again. Confirmation on player placement early is a big help. Communication between the VP of Rep and HL Director is so important if we are going to have a smooth transition into the house league season. I would suggest that during one of the earlier meetings we devote to house league. There is so much to do, go over, and to plan. Jerseys need to be solid colors. The Refs and the Coaches had difficulty with the colors chosen this years. I really liked the colors but it was difficult telling the players apart on the floor. I found out that One of the parents donated the pinnies for the team. It would nice to get a gift card and a thank you letter to this mom who donated. PeeWee Team finals there was an overtime win, a two goal win, and a one goal win in the final 3. My goal next year is to have a parent committee who help run the HL division. Its's a lot of work managing all divisions in HL for just one person. Having extra help would mean all teams get the attention they deserve. It would be a good idea to have access to the HL page on line so
the rosters could be posted and information could be sent to all parents that Coaches may have missed. In closing I would like to thank Marg Azvedo for all the time she dedicated. Explaining the process, getting the players on teams and being there for the final tournament weekend was a big help. Thanks Marg! I had a great season! Thanks Everyone Andria Scheduler Report 2017 This year we had an overall smooth season. Unfortunately with the decrease in number of teams we had an abundance of floor time Thankfully I was able to work with the Cities to release floor time back approximately 12 hours per week Fields were booked including hosting weekends Suggestions: Anything booked over and above the season needs to be requested and once confirmed payment needs to be submitted to treasurer prior to rental When booking floor for next year we need to book according to this year not what is hoped for Thanks to both Cities for being accomondating to us this year Karen 2017 KWMLA s AGM Registration Report Marg Azevedo, Volunteer Registrar I have generally enjoyed volunteering with KWMLA but am thrilled to be stepping down from KWMLA s board after completing this term. This has been a very difficult year. The communication across all levels of lacrosse is frustrating and leads to many misunderstandings and the constant redoing of work which in turn leads to burn out of good volunteers. On the other hand, registration will be 100% online in 2018 it will streamline the process and save many volunteer hours. I suspect that box will have exclusive links so parents will need to register across multiple links. Looking forward to 2018
I respectfully suggest that coaches consider logging onto coach.ca and making sure their transcript is perfect. If the courses are not marked as Trained then they need to address the outstanding issues. Clicking on the I should provide the information they need to update their transcript. The CLA has indicated that they will be going over transcripts to make sure all courses marked Trained are accurate. 2016 2017 Registration in Numbers Program Type of Registration 2016 # of registrants 2017 # of registrants Field Boys Online Sportsoft 190 181 Field Girls Online Sportzsoft 206 221 Field Mens U19 Fall Paper in 2016, online in 28 34 2017 Box Girls Paper 122 101 Box Boys Rep and Coed Paper 508 478 HL Executive Paper 6 (don t coach or train) 6 TOTAL: 1060 1021 Further Breakdown by Program Field - Boys -Type of Registration Number of Participants (190) 2017 (181) Coaches and Trainers 34 23 Spring Cancellations 20 includes 3 AP 22 Fall Cancellations 9 7 Spring Try Lacrosse*no fee 15 required Spring U9 10 (+2 AP) 12 Spring U11 19 14 Spring U13 18 17 Spring U15 23 21 Spring U17 19 (+1 AP) 17 Fall U13 15 13 Fall U16 23 20 **if you remove the Try Lacrosse registrations we had 166 registrations in 2017** U20 ( previously known as U19) Number of Participants (28) 2017 (34) Coaches and Trainers 5 6 Players 22 19 Cancellations 1 9
The timing of the release of the online link made this rollout a bit more difficult than one would expect. A huge thank you to Pete Pavlinich for his patience and support! I greatly appreciated your kindness and understanding! Next year should be easy as it is a quick roll over to set up the next season! Field - Girls Type of Registration Number of Participants (206) 2017 (221) Coaches and Trainers 30 30 Cancellations 15 16 Little Laxers 36 Girls U9 47 33 Girls U11 (9) U13 (23) 32 (U11s played up two teams 16 at U13) Girls U13 22 Girls U15 24 21 Girls U19 22 22 Ladies Senior 24 25 Awesome Lax (registration is ongoing) 12* accurate as at October 4, 2016 0 BOX Girls Type of Registration Number of Participants (122) 2017 (101) Coaches and Trainers 28 27 Cancelled 3 (we then had a wait list for 5 most programs) Girls Novice 19 0 Girls PeeWee 17 18* Girls Bantam 17 14* Girls Midget 19 19 Girls Intermediate 19 18* The Girl s novice division had 9 registrants after cancelling the program 2 were refunded, 2 went to PW girls and 5 went to HL. Girls PW, Bantam and INT all had player(s) withdraw after registering but before paying REP fees. These players are on our database but not rostered. BOX Boys Rep and Co-ed HL Number of Participants (508) 2017 (478) Type of Registration Coaches and Trainers 71 73 Cancelled 17 32 Co-ed Soft PPW 20 32 Co-ed PPW 57 52
Co-ed Tyke 58 51 Co-ed Novice 87 78 Co-ed PeeWee 94 110 Boys Bantam 49 34 Boys Midget 36 16* Boys Intermediate 19 Boy s Midget had one player who withdrew after registering but before paying REP fees. This player is on our database but not rostered. I wish everyone a great 2018 season and I look forward to seeing you on the field or in the arena! Respectfully submitted, Oct 2, 2017. Marg Azevedo, KWMLA Volunteer Registrar