Goalie Recruit For This Fall (Omar Kanji)

[KeithK]

[quote mnagowski]
Exactly. If the difference between making the All-Star team at the age of eight and subsequently being given more attention and training to make the travel team at the age of 12 is largely driven by such a random factor, I have a hard time arguing that the sports world is a strict meritocracy.

Now, I'm not trying to suggest that our athletes don't work incredibly hard towards their goals. Because they do. All I'm suggesting is that our notion of 'merit' should be re-considered.[/quote]
It is still merit based.  There's no grand conspiracy to advantage kids born in January.  Is there a possibility (likelihood?) that some good players will be passed over or not develop based on the vagaries of the calendar?  Sure. Is this short sighted?  Maybe.  But the kids are still being evaluated based on how they perform on the ice and at least to some degree by objective measures.

No where did I say that the sports world is a strict meritocracy.  It's just closer to one than most other things I can think of in American society. Plus, when I wrote "high level athletics" I was not referring to eight year olds.  There's nothing high level about pre-teen athletics (whether they can outskate or out-stickhandle me is beside the point).
I was thinking about adults - college, the pros.

[mnagowski]

There's no grand conspiracy to advantage kids born in January.

I never suggested there was. And I agree with you that sport is more merit-based than most realms of our society.

I was really just trying to ruffle your feathers by offering a hockey-related anecdote suggesting that a lot of accomplishments in life happen with some confluence of random chance.

As to my original point -- that of a visible minority on the hockey team next year -- I simply think it is good for the sport that individuals from differing backgrounds are being exposed to hockey. Just like it is good that youth lacrosse is exploding in inner-city Baltimore.

Who knows, maybe it will even bring some more student fans into Lynah, introducing even more to the sport.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

[quote mnagowski]

High level athletics really is about as close to meritocracy as you'll find in America.

That's why so many hockey players were born in January and February.

If he can stop the puck, I don't care if the guy's the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

I imagine most of the spectators in Lynah would think otherwise.[/quote]

I would think that the office staff at Sucks and princeton already think the faithful are a plague.  ::doh::

[Swampy]

[quote billhoward]Fascinating stuff about the birthdate disparities among hockey players, and a reason to keep browsing eLynah in the off-season.[/quote]

Yeah, but not such a revelation. (I was, however, happy to find such strong statistical support.) When I coached house league youth sports, which did not have a real draft, one of the first things I looked at was the birth month of the kids. Our league went August to July for a birth year (corresponding to the school grades in the local public school), and when we had a bunch of August-September births, I knew we were going to have a good season, even if the skills and athletic abilities of the players were evenly distributed throughout the league.

In fact, our psuedo-draft relied on the kids' ranking given by their coach at the end of the previous season. Kids were assigned randomly to teams in tiers: so many #1 kids, so many #2's, etc. Because coaches would take into account a kid's skills and athleticism and discount things like size, knowing that kids grow at different rates, the skill and athleticism of the players was pretty even throughout the league by design. Birth month, on the other hand, was completely uncontrolled. Hence it was possible to have a team heavily weighted with older or younger kids.::coffee::

[Swampy]

[quote CowbellGuy][quote mnagowski]1) This kid is a lot smarter and/or hits the books a lot harder than the rest of the 'all-stars' listed. Good for him.[/quote]

IB1 student Omar Kanji is such a player. He has been given the St. Michael's Majors Minor Midget 'AAA' Scholarship Award that is presented annually by the Greater Toronto Hockey League, which is the largest minor hockey league in the world.

"The scholarship is a one-time award of $1,000 and it is given towards my tuition at whichever university I attend," says Kanji. "The award was presented at the Hockey Hall of Fame, where I got the chance to meet former Toronto Maple Leafs legend Ron Ellis."

The criteria for winning the award was that the recipient had to have a high standard of excellence in hockey and at school. Kanji's College average is 91, and he's also involved in a lot of other UCC activities.

This past school year, he was a member of the Community Service Council at the College, a member of the investment club, a plenary head for the World Affairs Conference and he received a bronze medal for the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

http://www.ucc.on.ca/podium/default.aspx?t=204&id=m3IVc3src7w%3D[/quote]

Does the fact that they repeat the same paragraph about the amount the scholarship is worth mean that he actually got $2,000?

Also, what's with "I have decided that I will play varsity hockey for UCC and leave AAA hockey in order to pursue a Division 1 hockey scholarship to an American university."? I thought Canada is in America. Silly me.::nut::

[KeithK]

[quote Swampy]Also, what's with "I have decided that I will play varsity hockey for UCC and leave AAA hockey in order to pursue a Division 1 hockey scholarship to an American university."? I thought Canada is in America. Silly me.::nut::[/quote]
Yes, silly you.

[billhoward]

[Drift] We just passed out of the pre-HS youth lax and hockey leagues, and I could see some psycho sports father / coaches (win at all costs) who'd want to consider birthdate stats in drafting a team if they had the info.

Aside: We're on to HS now and one such outspoken dad was right under the open press box window and the game tape camcorder's mike picked up his rants against the regs, the coach, and all the other players who weren't feeding his son the ball.