Hockey is an expensive game, but at the grass roots level, everyone should be working to keep costs down, to foster participation and to give "everyone" an opportunity to play.

As an example, how can you look to surrounding communities to "support" waiting lists you create when you turn around and say you want an extra $150 for out-of- towners?

Read and draw your own conclusions.

10 Components of the Registration Cost

	Line Item	Per Player
1	OMHA Fees	$            43.86
2	Season and playoff ice cost	$          260.47
3	On & Off Ice Officials	$            40.63
4	Sweater and Socks	$            28.23
5	Honourariums	$              9.86
6	Calendar Prod and "Give-away"	$              8.75
7	Photos and Plaques	$              3.29
8	Development	$              5.00
9	Audit & Legal	$              5.00
10	President's Fund	$              2.50
	Developing Total	$          407.59

  2010 Registration "Fees"

1. The $$$$$ of Hockey – There are always a lot of questions floating around about minor hockey and why it costs what it does. Maybe if I am challenged for content, and there is any interest expressed, I will go more “in-depth” on this topic in my quest for a Pulitzer. If the Washington Post can win four, I should be able to snag at least one.

Anyway, as one “cost” item, the local associations need to pay fees to their governing body (in Oakville’s case the OMHA) to cover the cost of governance as well as provided shared services. The OMHA has their AGM coming up in June and as part of the advance information passed on to their members, overall and for budgeting purposes, they publish their fees. These fees are set-up on a per participant basis and participants include both the players and the volunteers AKA Bench Staff – Coaches – Trainers – Managers.

The Participant fees for the 2010 / 2011 season are $34.29 per participant (player or team official). A partial breakout of that fee is as follows:

While I am not passing judgment on these fees, they do end up representing a sizable expenditure. Look at them from two angles:

1.       For a large organization like the MOHA (4,000 players and around 800 Bench staff) the cheque to the OMHA for administrative services and the insurance (limited) that they provide is over $165,000 per season

2.       Consider a house league team where one tries to keep costs down and if that team has a coach, assistant coach, trainer and manager, that team “pays” $137.16 ($8.57 per player)to cover the cost of the team’s volunteers on top of the $548.64 for the 16 players (and there is an $16 per team registration fee as well).

A $400 registration now has less than $360 left before you even get into the “real” costs. Bet no one told you this before.

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2. The $$$$$ of Hockey – On April 12 I started this off by outlining the composition of OMHA fees that are part of the cost that must be covered each year by each player in their registration fees to play minor hockey. With the recently posted indication of the 2010/11 MOHA registration fees posted below, I thought that as another ploy to attract users on a regular basis I would start adding estimates of cost items on a serial basis to pique interest. Feel free to challenge my numbers and, or assumptions at any time, however, please use facts to do so.

My initial post covered OMHA fees that based on the individual player, volunteers and team registration worked out to about $43.86 per player.

Today I will provide an approximated ice cost for those teams that receive a 50 minute ice hour game once per week as well as a shared ice practice for 50 minutes (an official ice hour) once per week.

I have based my estimate on the Town’s posted facility cost as well as the impact of the infamous Town grant which gives qualifying user groups a 22% “discount” on the cost of their ice (pre tax). See the calculation below that produces a net ice hour cost to the user of $166.70.

This is the prime time ice rate for all facilities ex Joshua’s Creek Arenas posted rate, but I think the groups get the standard rate there as well.

It really is a simple calculation if they have not changed it.

From there just take an average 25 week season (inclusive of play-offs and the per player cost is pretty self evident. Remember, if your league does not get any practices it is a whole other ball game.

I can now drop this “expense” as a second item in my “here’s what it really costs table” and hopefully get folks curious as to what comes next. So far I have “used up” $304.33. Where is the other $190 going? $290 for those poor suckers who decide late, forget, are stretched for cash, or move to Town late. Welcome to the greedy and rip-off friendly and supportive local. Wait til I add more “expenses” – maybe I will be proved wrong.

Going forward, I will update this on the top of my blog page.

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3. The $$$$$ of Hockey – Round 3 – Officials – Another factor to consider in adding up the cost are the on and off ice officials provided for each game – i.e., referees and timekeepers. The OMHA prescribes the referees rate for all Rep games but does not require that same fee for House League. The OMHA rate is influenced by Age Level and Game Length (not how many As you have). For example, an OMHA rate for a 10/10/10 game (3 ten minute periods) for Peewee is $21 per referee in a two referee system. Given the laws of supply and demand (or so we are led to believe) for referees, and the “bonus” MOHA was paying of $1 per level (e.g., a level 3 referee receives an extra three bucks a game), consider that $21 as a reasonable benchmark cost. Throw in a timekeeper at $10 bucks a game and with 25 games and 32 players that works out to roughly $40.63 per player per season (at the peewee level - more or less for others.

Three big costs in - #1 Ice, Officials and OMHA fees. Running total $345. Still $150 bucks shy of the Early bird rate and $250 below the poor (literally) late registrant!

 Interesting timing that a lead sports story was a slam at "big" Sports charities and fundraisers for the percentage of $$ that actually got to the "grass roots cause". In challenging times, that needs to be true in all organizations at all levels and items that are "added cost" need to truly be "added value".

If you want to check out referee rates for other game lengths and levels the actual rates are in the OMHA’s Manual of Operations on their site.

Stay tuned for round 4 - what shall we price out next?

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4. The $$$$$ of Hockey – Round 4– Let's see! We have paid our dues to Big Brother (aka Hockey Canada, OHF, OMHA etc.), We have paid for our ice and we have covered referees and timekeepers. What's next? Oh yeah, we need a stunning wardrobe - the Pirates, the Knights, the Eagles and all those other catchy names. As part of their registration fees, players are provided with a team sweater and socks.

When I was summarily executed, we had finished a formal RFP process for uniforms for the next three years so I believe these numbers should be a reasonable reflection of House League socks and sweaters. I cannot speak to Rep as a number of weird and wonderful things have gone on there. However, sticking with the Peewee mindset, Sweaters were about $16.99 for "Adult" sizes - which the Peewees were in and socks were a mix of Youth @ $7.79 and Adult @ $7.99. go with the expensive gusto and socks and sweater (pre-tax) add up to $24.98 per player. There are some funny tax issues on "kids clothes" but assume the worst and add the new HST at 13% and the new total is $28.23 which I have added to my running table total (see above). With fees, ice, officials and uniforms, we are now at $373.19.

BUT - don't forget from the "uniform" perspective - the attempt is to secure sponsorship for each team at $500 per pop. If the team / organization does a good job and gets that sponsorship (as they should) the $500 works out to $31.25 and "wipes out" this registration player expense attributed to uniforms!

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5. The $$$$$ of Hockey – Round 5 - as part of my continuing attempt to quantify and qualify the cost to play minor hockey, especially at the house league level, I have been trying to quantify for folks the items that overall have the most impact in compiling the expenses that need to be covered with registration fees. For a number five, I have chosen to comment on honorariums. Over the years, the MOHA has elected to create honorariums for different positions and roles. From an officer level, the president, treasurer, and two VPs, house league and town rep, are awarded honorary and for their contributions in time to hear. All honorary were prorated on a per player basis Tuesday budgets involved -- i.e. house league or town rep. What this meant, was that house league players paid approximately 87% of the president and treasurer's honorariums as roughly 87% of the registrations were for house league players. The honorariums for EVP of Housley was allocated 100% to the house league budget as were the honorariums that were paid to the individual house league conveners to support their role.

League conveners received an honorarium equal to $60 per team in their division. In effect, they would receive $360 for a six team division. At $60 per team and with 16 players per team the cost per player for the convener honorarium was $3.75. Add to this the cost to cover the relevant portion of officers honorariums as well as the cost of other honorariums paid to individuals like the senior convener, the referee scheduler, the timekeeper scheduler, the clinic coordinator, and the equipment manager and the total cost of honorariums to house league was approximately $36,000. With about 3,500 house league players, the burden for honorariums for all of the support individuals for house league worked out to less than $10 per player ($35,808 / 3,632 = $9.86).

People can argue the merits of paying or not paying honorariums to volunteers. However, in this day and age, it is becoming more and more difficult to find people who are willing to provide volunteer services at any “cost”. Anyone who has a concern about providing this funding to either the individuals involved as conveners or to directors or officers of the Association, should sit down and figure out what this translates to on an hourly basis and recognize people are not really being paid to do the job. That's different from a salaried employee in the Association or actual game fees paid to timekeepers or referee.

With these six items, a big chunk of the annual expenses have been covered and we are now at total of $383.05. Stay tuned for more.

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6. - 7. The $$$$$ of Hockey – Round 6 & 7 -I am starting to run out of "meaningful" numbers (other than “admin”) to include in my ongoing tally of specific costs reflected in registrations. Don’t forget that for rep players, the cost of everything over and above the standard house league player registration coverage is supposed to be identified, costed out and specifically factored into the rep team assessment that is then parceled out to rep players – parents. The concept being user pay and fair value.

To keep things moving, today, I will deal with two items -- calendars and pictures.

Calendars have been used as a long-term fundraiser for MOHA dating back to when it was necessary to demonstrate fundraising activity in order to qualify for the town grant. The comment always used to be that the registration fee included the $40 calendar charge and that the calendars themselves could be resold to defer registration costs. As a pariah, I can't necessarily confirm current specifics but the last available information I have put the cost of producing the calendars plus the "giveaway" (the money to winners in the calendar draw) was approximately $35,000. If one pegs registration at 4,000 participants then the cost associated with this program would be about $8.75 per registrant.

Pictures involve both the "free" pictures for every player as well as providing a sponsor plaque with a picture of the team for each team. Again, the last numbers I had for these items were $2.50 per player and $12.65 per sponsor plaque. Apportioning the plaque back to player runs the total photo bill for each individual up to $3.29. Still quite a gap.

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8. - 10. The $$$$$ of Hockey – Round 8 - 10 - With the MOHA just around the corner and the “potential” actual opportunity for members to ask questions of the Cabal in a public forum, I thought I would top of my topic with three more items for a nice round Bo Derek.

8. Development – was an area that we took pride in and that did not mean just running clinics – although more of that later or in future issues. We invested in shooter pad ice time (and got abuse for stealing it from the commercial guys) as well as instructor fees to help train and improve our house league goalies. It is important to have that extra training when you are sitting on a wait list. We also booked school Gym time for both Rep and House League teams to use to build team dynamics and skills (for free). Cost of this was about $20,000 or $5 per player.

9. Audit & Legal – a comprehensive audit for members is a must for organizations such as MOHA with direction over $2 Million in funds and largely volunteer driven. These do not come cheap and with some provision for legal expense we earmarked around another $20,000 or $5 per player.

10. President’s Fund – Contrary to popular belief everyone in Oakville is not financially secure and a surprising (not) number have run into bumps on the road. To try to soften some blows and ensure that the young man (or lady) did not lose out on an opportunity to play hockey, a budgeted $10,000 or $2.50 per player was set aside to contribute all or part of the registration fees for folks in this unfortunate situation. For the mathematically challenged this represented about 25 registrations at $400 a pop.

Plugging those items into my little chart presented above brings my running total to $407.59.

Assuming everyone pays in time to get the “early” price of $495 (which a significant number do not), that leaves roughly $87 unaccounted for or at 4,000 players about $350,000+ in the black

Now – to be fair, I have not counted for Administration – rent, utilities and wages in my little scenario BUT that number was in the order of $175,000. Let’s see $350,000 - $175,000 = $175,000 still left.

Remember I have accounted for the bulk of the “HST Hit” in my ice calculation, and, also remember that the intent is, or should be to run on a break even basis to not fatten up the surplus any more, and, remember that I have not baked in any of the incremental revenue gouge on the registration side - $595 possibly plus non resident fine fee!!

Then I ask you, is it reasonable, explainable or defendable to imply or pretend that administrative costs or other costs have been uncontrolled or unmanaged enough to have doubled to chew up the incremental $175,000+ or extra $43.75+ per player???

I am not a CA but I can do a budget and, I know the numbers – I used to do them.

As a member (which I no longer am) this might raise some questions to ask at the AGM. But, as a non member I have no standing and would likely be asked to leave anyway so it won’t be me asking but someone may want to.

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