Wolves celebrate house league success with awards week

The Niagara-on-the-Lake Wolves Minor Hockey Association celebrated a resurgence of its house league program this year with a week of in-house championships and team awards. 

“The last few years the focus has all been on rep teams,” association president Pete Flynn tells The Local. “We’re a minor-major centre. After the travel teams were chosen, we always heard from parents whose kids were cut that they wanted an AE (Alternate Entry — a level between house league and rep) team. But those teams never did well, so I never understood that.”

This year, when the Niagara District Hockey League did some restructuring, he says, it left little room for NOTL to field AE teams. 

“So we weren’t able to have AE this year, and got our house league numbers back up,” Flynn explains. “The OMHA (Ontario Minor Hockey Association) is really pushing house league select now, anyway. That’s the way it used to be.”

Flynn says the change brought increased success to NOTL’s house league programs on the ice, making the game much more enjoyable for the kids involved. 

“This year our house league teams were about 30 to 40 games above .500,” he says. “Last year it was the opposite. We’ve had a dramatic turn. All of our house league teams were very competitive. And this year our two atom teams (U11) and our two peewee teams (U13) did well in tournaments, too.”

Case in point — at the March Break House League tournament, NOTL teams at the U13, U15 and U18 ages all played in their respective championship games. 

With three U11, two U13 and two U18 house league teams in NOTL this year, it was decided to hold house league championships for those age groups last week. It wasn’t possible for the U15 age group that only had one house league team. 

If anyone needed proof that there was parity in the way the in-house teams were selected, the fact that Gary Friesen’s U11 team one edged Flynn’s team two by a 2-1 score Saturday afternoon, while James Cadeau and Phil Leboudec’s U18 team one beat Rob Carroll’s team two that evening 3-2, should suffice. 

“We worked together, and really focused on making the teams balanced,” Flynn explains. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be done, and how the Niagara District League wants it done.”

Flynn is hoping the trend toward competitive, fun house league play continues moving into 2023-2024.

“If you’re one of the last kids cut from a travel team,” he says, “you can go to a house league team and be a star. You can also play on a house league select team, and be AP’ed (designated as an affiliate player) to a travel team. You can’t go wrong there.”

Overall, Flynn estimates that almost 400 kids aged six to 18 were involved in hockey in NOTL between house league, rep teams and hockey school in 2022-2023. 

“I fully expect us to have the same kind of set-up next year, hopefully with two teams at the U15 level,” he says.