Tuesday, February 16, 2010

OKANAGAN HOCKEY ACADEMY: LICENSE TO WHAT?

Here's a few facts for you that people may be interested in. After the tragic accidents involving high school teams and 15 passenger vans, OHA decided to have their staff licensed to drive them. Prior to that, they had a handful with proper licencing and the rest were driving players without the correct classification. They have even had a coach driving players in a personal vehicle while he didn't possess even a full licence in British Columbia. That's the equivalent of having a 16 year old that just got his New Driver designation driving your sons and daughters. I played at OHA, no longer do, but still have close ties to some of the guys there, if you want the truth, ask any of the players. Yes it was a good time, I developed off ice in the gym, on ice was OK, we were out matched pretty severely which I don't think helped in front of scouts at showcases, but if I was a parent I'd be looking at things like who's driving your kids and the risk they are taking.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

i don't have full knowledge of the licensing of the van drivers, but i do know paying customer's lives have been put at risk.
i was in a van being driven to Alberta where the driver was high on opiate painkillers and was nodding in and out of consciousness. at one point the van began to fishtail and had to be corrected in the midst of oncoming traffic on the other side of the highway.
this driver was kept on the payroll for a few months after this incident, before his little prescription problem caught up with him in an unrelated incident.

Anonymous said...

last year we had a very scary road trip to Calgary at OHA. Our trainer was passing cars very dangerously and we were about 1 second from a head on collision. It makes me wonder if she had a liecense to drive vans. It scared the piss out of all of us. I love hockey but not enough to die

Anonymous said...

i agree tanya f**** sucks at driving i cant count the number of times she ran a red light only to realize it a few seconds later

Anonymous said...

Here's some more food for thought. Dixon Ward as the recruiter for OHA and in charge of finding places for players to play beyond the Okanagan Hockey Academy. Dixon's contact base through the BCHL, AJHL, SJHL, MJHL, USHL, NAHL is non-existent. He has contacts at one major US college, but let's be serious, is UND going to take every player off his hands. Not a chance. He walks around every rink with an arrogance that is behind confident in his hockey knowledge, to the arrogant in his lifestyle. There are not many coaches or gm's throughout any junior league that respect him or his opinion. It's not necessarily that his opinion is valid, it's more to the point that he doesn't treat people, his co-workers, coaches or players with respect or dignity. If you think this is all hearsay, then ask a coach or general manager if they have a working relationship with Dixon. PS. Don't ask Alberni, despite being obligated too say he does, I highly doubt Nolan Graham actually does.

Anonymous said...

Wow, something tells me someone else doesn't think much of dixon ward. Almost all that is said about dixon, can be said about a lot of the people at oha.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Dixon Ward is a good guy. He just needs to find his way to a good 12 step program. And he needs to never coach again because he was nothing but a no show and the families got nothing in the way of a refund.

Anonymous said...

It's not that I have a low opinion of Dixon, it's just that I have no opinion. In a completely unbiased opinion about a guy as I see it. He has very little to offer a player in terms of moving them on, simply based on a lack of respect he shows to any other person in hockey. There's no questioning that he played in a league that very few people in the world can play in, so he has talent and a knowledge of the game that few people have. However, the fact someone played in the NHL doesn't make them qualified to teach the game, and certainly doesn't make them more credible to anyone if you act like Dixon does. Robert Dirk and Blake Wesley both exemplify what salt of the earth, grounded individuals truly are. Now their opinion in the hockey world is respected. Kind of funny how that correlation works, show respect to people and get respect.