This past weekend, the Bantam Elite League launched onto the scene with a tryout for remaining spots into their League.  The Bantam Elite League is composed of players born July 1, 1999 to June 30, 2000, or in Minnesota terms, first year Bantams. The league will have six teams of twenty players, five from the Metro Area and one from the North. Teams will play games from mid July to the end of September. The BEL invited eighty plus players to their league, plus five goalies.  The tryout this weekend was to fill the remaining positions.

The first tryout on Saturday was Goalie specific.  Nine goalies were evaluated on Saturday afternoon by Pro Hybrid goalie instructors.  Each Goalie was evaluated based on his skating ability, puck handling, footwork and of course how well he stopped the puck.  We asked the Goalie parents what they thought of the process and each seemed to pretty impressed with how it was run.  One mom said, “in all my years of being a goalie mom, this is the first time I’ve ever seen my son tested like this…”

The first full tryout was Saturday night.  The League had 44 kids on the ice.  Which is a lot of kids to see in a short amount of time.  Former NHL standout Tom Chorske ran the sessions with the boys.  It was part skill evaluation, part scrimmage and part physical exertion. Several players from big associations were there as well as kids from Wisconsin, North Dakota, and tiny LaCrescent, Minnesota.

On Sunday, 44 players arrived. Including a new goalie from Wayzata. The Sunday tryout also featured four skaters from Luverne, MN, a player from South Dakota, and players from St. Cloud, Sartell and Hudson, WI.  Sunday’s tryout had a different tone than Sunday.  Players who played both tryouts played with an urgency and players who were only there for Sunday played really hard.  This made for a much higher energy drills (a few forwards getting an early afternoon of pancakes) and more physical play during the scrimmage, including a couple man-sized body checks.

Prior to each skate, the players were put through a dry land warm up, a speech from the League, and speech from Tryout organizer Tom Chorske.  During Tom’s speech, he reminded the boys that they are just that, boys.  And that a tryout of this magnitude is only a marker of your progress today as a player. It will not define how good you are the rest of your life, it will only define where you are today.  He went on to say, “I was cut from the 1988 Olympic team, I was in Calgary, the site of the Olympics when I found out…my dream of playing for my country died that day, I re-grouped, went back to the Gophers, played 10+ years in the NHL and won a Stanley Cup.  In hindsight, getting cut was a great marker for who was at the time, but not a marker for the rest of my life.”
 
Speaking to parents during the process, they were excited for a new concept for kids this age.  One dad of three said, “I wish they would have had this three years ago for my oldest.  The 8th, 9th, 10th grade kids have no real formal place to play of be seen.”

The League plans to announce it’s last 15 spots within the next week and have an entry draft in Early October for all five Metro teams.
YHH will be there to cover which players get announced and what team they are playing for.