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Sunday, October 22, 2000 Oakville Beaver W eekend 23 Sports An O akville B eaver F eature Editor NORM NELSON Phone:845-3824, ext 255 Fax:337-5567 E-mail:nnelson@haltonsearch.com Rangers are rarin' to go By Norm Nelson BEAVER SPORTS EDITOR Montana may have homesteads bigger than some small countries, but the same boast can't be said o f their hockey system. "Mitron ju st sold their program to the Montana minor hockey association -- the whole state -- and there are less teams in the whole o f M ontana then there are in the Oakville house league," chuckled Keith Murray, who is the head coach and devel opment coordinator for Oakville's M inor Oaks Hockey Association (MOHA). And now add one more title to his port folio -- the M OHA volunteer vice presi dent o f rep hockey which involves head ing up the Oakville Rangers rep teams. He accepted the job, basically, because no one else w anted it. "I took it on with the promise o f lots of help which I've had. I think that if you didn't run it the way we're doing it now, where we're getting lots of help, it's just too big a volunteer situation. It's ju st too m uch." He's got it com paratively easy, he laughs, ju st dealing with the 24-team rep hockey system. "Wayne M oorehead is the house league equivalent, and he's got 160 teams." The am ount of work he had to put in to prepare for the recent house league draft, he said, was phenomenal. "Guys shouldn't have to do that." Not that the sm aller but more intense rep system is a piece of cake. "We've iced 24 teams this year which is the same as last year," said Murray. There has been some tinkering done to the teams. The league decided that kids were get ting involved in the rep system a little to early and pulled the plug on its very youngest, seven-year-old tyke rep team. "We were concerned about the number o f games tykes were playing, the travel tykes had and the fact there are no stats to say if kids start playing triple-A hockey at seven, they're going to be triple-A players at 11 or 13 or 17 or whatever." The league's own limited experience suggests the jury is still out. Their current Oakville Rangers atom triple-A team, which started out at the tyke level, has only five hold overs. Elim inating the team wasn't well received, conceded Murray, but he added that it has been replaced by a development program, headed up by a couple of the parents. "What they did is open it up to all tyke red (house league) kids. I think they cut it off at 30 or 35 (players) or something, and they're going three times a week, and they're just practicing and scrimmaging. "They're not playing in any tourna ments because they have that option with their house league teams." Ironically, Murray believes this new approach will actually bolster the number o f players who are ready to play at the inaugural rep level in MOHA, which is now at the eight-year-old minor novice age level. At the other end of the spectrum, the midget double-A team, which folded mid season last year, is back on board. "This year we seem to have enough committed kids to make a run at it." Another change has seen the single-A bantam team eliminated, primarily because of lack of player interest, and that has been balanced by the addition of the more elite double-A bantam team. One of MOHA's new initiatives this year has been a development program for all of the rep goalies. Murray said when he polled the coach es over the summer about a goalie pro gram, he said the response was like, "it's about time, we're doing a lot for everyone else but we're still forgetting about the goalies." Besides regular sessions by "very com petent goalie instructor coaches" they've also instituted a buddy system linking the older rep goalies with the younger ones. "It's really nice for an eight year old to be teamed up with a 14-year-old." The Mitron system, mentioned earlier, which is basically a unique new compre hensive and detailed approach to the game, is now firmly entrenched. The vet eran coaches "are all comfortable with it." MOHA, which has basically become one of the flagships of the Mitron system, had a chance to show off the system, last month, at a Toronto Maple Leafs minor hockey festival that was attended by minor hockey officials and coaches from across the province. They got to see both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Calgary Flames practice at the Air Canada Centre followed by a ques tion and answer session with the respec tive NHL coaches, Pat Quinn and Don Hay. "One o f the questions that went to Don Hay was 'how much do you skate your (See Rangers' page 24) Hot off winning the OMHA cham pi onship and finishing as finalists in the all-O n tario's, the O akville R angers, now com peting at the m inor bantam level, had a great start to the new sea son when they recently won a star stud ded Toronto tournam ent. Continually trying to push th em selves, th e y 've brought in popular ex-L eaf N ikolai Borschevsky for a couple o f sessions. Photos by Barrie Erskine BLT Breakfast Bagel