I wanted to comment on the article by Coach Bauer regarding splitting CO-OPS and the need for a two-division system. I have read many of Dan's articles and respect him to the highest regard in terms of his thoughts on WIAA hockey and wanting to make the sport better.

I do however, think there are some misconceptions when it comes to some of the existing CO-OPS. Take the Fox Cities Stars CO-OP for example. Yes, we have seven schools in our CO-OP, but I think we get too caught up in the number of schools and the enrollment when looking at these programs.

The fact is that we have two schools that have no players, but based on the request of the schools have kept them in the CO-OP. We have one school with one player, and one school with two players. So in these cases I think it is unfair to use the total enrollment as a basis for the program size. We have 32 players in our CO-OP and have finally been able to field a JV program over the last couple years.

What I am most proud of is the fact that this past season we had six kids stay with the sport, who prior to the season played on B teams or house teams their entire careers. In looking at many programs in the area, these young men would have hung up their skates after Bantams. As an advocate of the game I am happy to see these players continue to play, even when the chance to be a future 1st or 2nd line varsity player is highly unlikely. In some cases having a school in the CO-OP allows for those one or two kids from a school to have a chance to play high school hockey.

Additionally, 90% of our players come from the Appleton Area Hockey Association. This holds true for Appleton United as well. So we really have one association feeding two high school teams. When I travel to some of the smaller association or towns I see they have one association and typically they are all feeding one high school program. So in many cases their upcoming numbers are similar to what we see, but their enrollment is a fourth of ours.

We also are unique in the fact that we have private schools in our program. I can stand up in any room with coaches and stay with 100% confidence that we have never used that as a means to bring kids into our program. The opposite has occurred as we have lost players to other school during the last five years. We look to build our program with the kids that have looked to be part of the program as peewee's and my philosophy is we build our team with those players that want to be part of the CO-OP based on the merits of what these schools can offer from an educational standpoint.

We have never looked to use our CO-OP as a means to build a juggernaut. We had a very talented team this past season and won a very competitive Badgerland conference title. The conference had such great parity this season and many of the games game down to the 3rd period. I can't tell you how many times I have visited a rink, and while sitting in the lobby have heard people from other teams complain about our seven schools, etc. The simple truth is they are uneducated to the true situation and when I see these programs having numbers similar I think this is a cop-out as to why their programs are not developing success. It is much easier to complain about others as opposed to looking inward.

We are self-funded program that has users fee's over $700 for both JV and varsity players. We practice at 5:45am to help keep costs down, but is also due to the limited ice at Tri-County. Our goal is to allow players of all skill sets the opportunity to play WIAA hockey, and the hope is after their high school careers are over we have created a love for the game that will be passed on to their kids and so on.

In closing, I do agree that each CO-OP should have the goal of splitting into multiple teams, but the hard reality is costs, ice time, and the talent pool to allow teams to be somewhat competitive may not always be sufficient even if the enrollment or programs number are at a certain level. Again I would say you can't simply look at each CO-OP with a broad stroke, but need to peel back the layers to truly determine what the truth behind the curtain is.

Troy Schwehr
Head Coach
Fox Cities Stars