The Big Red (Tier) One
 It looks like the USHL will continue to expand their western division, as an unnamed ownership group is negotiating to place a franchise in a new 4,500 seat arena under development as part of a $200M retail and recreation complex in Junction City, Kansas.Huh?!??? Junction City? Go to Kansas City... hop on I-70 and head west... past Lawrence... past Topeka... and past Manhattan... 20 miles later you've made it to Junction City... Junction City? Okay, I won't belabor the point any further. Most of you probably have no idea where this town is. Junction City is a town of about 20,000 in a county of about 30,000, and is adjacent to Fort Riley. Fort Riley, besides being Custer's post and the home of the Buffalo Soldiers, was once and now again (thanks to base consolidations) the current home of the First (Mechanized) Infantry Division, the Big Red One (yes, the same One as in the 1980 Lee Marvin/Mark Hamill movie). With the return of the division, Junction City is a boomtown. The article mentions 9,000 additional soldiers (don't forget their families) over the next four years. Combine this with the existing population and the 60k or so folks next door in Manhattan, and you've got a fairly decent little hockey market to tap into. (news link with video) In other news... Colbert wins bet against Oshawa mayor in OHL rivalry. Hey folks, this has been some great marketing by the Spirit... Roy ends tantrum, goes back behind the bench... NCAA exploring role of advisors... Tonawanda steps aside, but OHL team still needs home... London 2008 Memorial Cup deposits through the roof... |
posted by Marc Foster at 1/29/2007 02:00:00 AM
Comments on "The Big Red (Tier) One"
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Marc Foster said ... (7:53 PM, January 29, 2007) :
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Ryan said ... (9:25 PM, January 29, 2007) :
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Anonymous said ... (3:48 PM, January 30, 2007) :
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Ryan said ... (9:46 PM, January 30, 2007) :
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Anonymous said ... (12:15 AM, January 31, 2007) :
post a commentI have two different sources confirming the effort is a USHL one. Also, both Junction City and Topeka are only about 3.5 hours from Lincoln.
that's why when those teams would travel to Junction City, they would play back to back games and be done playing there for that season.
The amount of weekday games has drastically decreased now that there is an even amount of teams, so a Tuesday game in Columbus shouldn't hinder as much if they had to do it every other week like it seemed teams had to do last season.
First thing anyone brings up when weekday games are mentioned, is lost school time. It's almost pointless to even discuss it. There aren't as many high school students in this league as people think. And, for those players who are in high school, arrangements are made to make up the missed class time. It's a minor inconvenience and nothing more.
Junction City, if it ever does happen, is at least three years away. If Rapid City ever comes in, you won't see them for awhile either. There are other cities the league is looking at that'll be in before Junction City and Rapid City ever see the USHL Light of Day.
And why doesn't anyone, when talking about travel, ever talk about the Tri-City Storm in Kearney? 13 hours each way to Indianapolis, 15 hours each way to Columbus, 12 hours(give or take) each way to Green Bay. Other than Lincoln or Omaha, every trip is four hours plus each way for us. The Eastern teams have far less travel concerns than Tri-City does.
"Green Bay, Omaha, Indy and Ohio don't have any within 2 hours."
Omaha is 45 minutes from Lincoln, and Sioux City is an hour and a half.
And with GB having to travel to Ohio mid-week, I'm sure it has a lot to do with the availability of Nationwide. They take the backburner to any event that they have going on at Nationwide. They have had to play a few games at the practice rink due to other activities going on.
Whether the kids are in school or not shouldn't matter much. If the kid is a good student, he's still going to be a good student. If he's not a good student, then he's still not going to be good.
"Green Bay has six high school kids. For the Ohio trip, they left at 9 am Monday and got back at 7 am Thursday morning" if you are talking about the Dec 12/13 Trip they also played back to back game up there which I'm assuming was to try to lessen the amount of time the players had to travel. Complaining to us on a blog isn't going to solve your problem. One of the sacrifices the players at this level will have to make is the possibility of missing school.I think it was you who mentioned the players may miss a lab or speaker.. The players know well in advance their game schedules and can probably arrange to have the speaker video taped or to do the lab after school. It's not like they aren't going to have the opportunity ever again. But for most of the players the chance to play in the USHL may never come again and this is the chance of a life time. They have the option of staying at the HS (or equivalent) level, but most of the HS kids are aware they may miss school and as far as I'm aware they seem to accept it. I suppose if enough of the USHL PLAYERS parents complained to the league they might attempt to schedule the season so that no school will be missed. But trying to arrange that would be near impossible.