This morning on my way into the office I have been thinking about a comment someone sent in late last night that really made me sit back and think. This person asked if we did this to draw attention to ourselves or to promote youth hockey. It made me ask if we’ve become nothing more than the Omaha Enquirer. So I came into work early and went back and read some of the posts along with the comments to see what happened and when it happened.
When this was started back in Feburary we had no intentions of it becoming the message board for whats wrong with youth hockey. A group of us were sitting at a Knights game talking about city issues and came up with the idea to share our comments and see if anyone would read them. We attracted an average of 100 hits a day back then, mostly Knights people, a few UNO fans, some of our old Lancers chums and because of what we wrote about city politics we atttracted some very brite and funny readers who would chime in. Two of them joined us in the venture and not all of us have kids in hockey.
Back in March we did a spot on some crazed parents at a youth hockey game. We got a pretty good response to it. It was written by one of the people we call staff, persons with a password to post here, and it was very telling of the insanity of some people in all youth activities. That person who was in the know more than any of us also did a piece later in the summer about the elections in the O.M.A.H.A. organization. The members here with kids that participate agreed with the piece and its bitting nature. For thoes of us that were there ,something wasn’t holding water. That post hung on here for months with nary a comment untill right before travel try-outs were to take place.
The new try-out format was published and all the bitching began. That is when we decided to really watch the try-outs as a group and then listen to what people were saying. It was the craziest thing you have ever seen. There were people with sheets of paper writting down things on a kids performance, and these people were not coaches. There were rumors that the teams were picked by the board allready, there were rumors some people were blackballed by board memebers.
We tried to write what was acurate. We also did the post on Mr. Wilkie asking that burning question, what and why are we paying him ? It’s isn’t that we dislike him, but after hearing he had been disiplined by USA Hockey from some Gladiator people we thought it was a good idea to ask. Suddenly people started to chime in about this and that being unfair and this happened and that happened. Things started to heat up around here.
We made a choice to split some duties as to who watched the site and when after we started taking to frightening number of hits. We wanted to make sure we were up to date and also we needed to keep an eye on comments posted. For the most part we let everything go around here, that was the fun in this was being able to say the things you whisper to your friends anyway. Some of us watched city issues with all the happenings in North Omaha, in the City Council and everything in between. Others watched the hockey side and tried to keep the rest of us caught up on things.
The hurricane hit the day rosters were posted. We were only trying to have some fun with it, kind of like what CBS does with the NCAA Selection Show during March Madness. Sit around, BS and wait for the names to appear. That is when things started to turn hard to the youth hockey. One member of our group stepped back because of things they had heard people talking about at the rink. Their post had nuzzeled a little close to home and the things being said about it, well we can just say it resemebled a Gotti conversation.
Now suddenly there is great turmoil over this blog racing around youth hockey in Omaha. People are pointing fingers at us for things other people have said, and that is fine, it was put up here so it is our responsibility. We are getting yelled at because we dare even ask some questions about the organization. All we ever asked for were answers. If you were to look back at the inquiry about the coach in question, we did get some answers that we were happy with for the most part and tried to leave it be. It was the readers who picked it up from there and started asking.
And yes we made some nasty comments about a few people in here. Again nothing more than what people say standing in the bleachers anyway and in one case nothing worse that what that person had said about a couple of people who write here and their kids.
Did we do this to bring down O.M.A.H.A. ? Certainly not. Speaking for myself, I have a player in house who can’t wait for things to start. I was planning on a piece this fall about the joys of watching a kid play for fun and the hard work of the people who get on the ice week after week and teach them.
Does it look as if things are unraveling ?
Right now I think so. It isnt where I inteneded it to go nor the other person that I work with who this morning was thinking the same thing when they got to work.
So after all that, I have asked all the people that contribute to this to meet in our little chat area this morning and discuss the future of this site. Do we eliminate it ? Do we give it some time off ? We tried to split it and found we couldn’t move the posts from one place to another without loosing content.
Do we just eliminate the youth hockey content or do we just wipe the board clean and start over with some of us here talking city issues and the others starting their own page and talking hockey ?
If your a consistant reader and want to chime in please do so soon. We will have this meeting early this morning and honestly want any input people want to share.
A special note to our teacher friend who grades our papers. Because our spell cheker isnt in working order here, this is in rough form but has to be posted to be looked at for corrections, give us a few minutes before you start grading. :-) We love the comments anyway.
Thanks and we will be back later…
