Editorial

JWHL Weekend in Lake Placid
By: Martha Smith

Imagine this scenario: you have world-class competition and a world-class venue for said competition.  Now imagine this: for some rather lackluster reasons, the awesome marriage of venue and competition will never happen.  Let me explain why. 

Here at National Sports Academy we have been wondering why as well.  Hosting a JWHL (Junior Women’s Hockey League) league weekend would bring in a level of girls hockey games to the town that is often not seen by residents, it would be at one rink, enabling scouts to stay in a single building and see the elite athletes compete.

Junior Women's Hockey League

There are concerns that are brought up with the idea of hosting a JWHL weekend in Lake Placid, mainly the process of getting to Lake Placid.  The closest major airport is about two hours away.  That means that teams flying in would not only have to get flown in they would then have a two hour drive to get to Lake Placid.

That is an issue to be considered, but once the teams have arrived in Lake Placid there is not much more driving that would be required.  The town is small so unlike JWHL weekends hosted in places like Boston, and New Haven, the teams would not have to stay twenty minutes away from one of the rinks, and thirty away from the other.  Instead they would be able to stay five to ten minutes away from the one, and only facility that they would be playing at.

The question now remains: Why hasn’t a JWHL weekend been hosted in Lake Placid if it is indeed such an ideal place.  The problem that arises is not with the JWHL heads but rather with ORDA (Olympic Regional Development Authority), who refuse to give the amount of ice needed to host a league weekend.

To many people it seems hard to believe that they would not be willing to give up one weekend of ice to host some of the highest level of girls’ hockey.  The biggest issue is the fact that majority of CAN/AM Tournaments are held at the Olympic Training Facility here in Lake Placid.  These tournaments bring in a lot of money for the Olympic facilities and if they begin to give weekends to things such as a JWHL weekend CAN/AM could stop using Lake Placid, and it would result in a huge financial let down for the rink.

Olympic Training Facility in Lake Placid

Because CAN/AM brings in so much money it means that those tournaments get priority over others. 

The question then arises as to why the JWHL can’t just host a weekend there when CAN/AM does not have a tournament scheduled.  That is easier said than done.  CAN/AM has multiple age divisions that come in for the tournaments, and they generally try to get about six teams in each.  If they have only five signed up for a weekend they wait to do the schedule until later, hoping to either have another team sign up last minute, or they will choose to invite a local team to fill in.

By waiting so long to ensure that they have a good number of teams it means that scheduling any other use of ice time can be very difficult.  This is a huge issue for the JWHL, who have weekend game times planned months in advance.  The JWHL does not have the luxury of being able to wait until a few weeks before to know when games will be played.

Another factor is the fact that the JWHL has league weekends generally played on the same weekends every year, that creates even less flexibility in trying to have one of the weekends hosted in Lake Placid.

As ideal as Lake Placid is to host a JWHL League Weekend, without the full support of ORDA, and the corporation of scheduling the hope of hosting the JWHL in Lake Placid is not likely to happen within the near future.