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Hockey Events Affected Nationally by COVID-19

By Webmaster, 03/12/20, 11:00AM EDT

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Tournaments Being Cancelled Across the Country

As events around the globe are cancelled and being affected by the COVID-19 outbreaks hockey is no exception.  Late on 11 March 2020 USA Hockey announced that they would be cancelling a series of National Championships, including high school, youth, girls, adult and sled, that were set to begin in various locations across the country on March 26 as well as its Disabled Hockey Festival which was due to take place in Pittsburg, PA over the weekends of March 26-29 and April 2-5. 

This came only hours after NYSAHA announced that the State Championship games taking place over the 13-15 March weekend would include no spectators at the request of the Town of Amherst that has been the longstanding host of the annual event.  To help out NYSAHA had partnered with hockeytv.com to offer free access to the games for the families of the players.  The plan was to have players dropped at their rinks and parents return to their hotels and homes to watch online.  However, in light of the decision by USA Hockey to cancel National Championships the NYSAHA decided to cancel the state championships again to air on the side of safety for its players and participants.

Locally, the CSYHA Midget 18U and Pee Wee teams were set to travel to Rochester this weekend to participate in the Rochester Rumble tournament.  On the morning of 12 March participants were informed by MYHockeyTournaments.com, the event’s organizer, that in keeping with USA Hockey current standards they opted to cancel that event due to safety concerns as well.  For this event all tournament fee’s are being returned to teams and as lodging is done by the organizer they were taking care of cancelling all hotel reservations for teams who booked lodging through their site, those who may have booked extra rooms directly are responsible for canceling those rooms.

It is unfortunate that the end of so many hockey seasons will come to an abrupt end without end of the season tournaments, state and national championships being decided but all parties are deciding to be cautious as the current COVID-19 situation is still evolving and there are too many unknowns.

For the CSYHA Midget 18U team they are looking to get together for one last local event to end the season with a in-house scrimmage and get together but a date will not be decided for that until more information about the current situation is known.   Should things calm down soon and spring and summer tournaments resume the team has not ruled out one last off-season event.

For more information on USA Hockey and how it is affected by and responding to COVID-19 you can fisit their website at: https://www.usahockey.com/playersafety where they are posting regular updates from their leadership and medical teams.