For the last 5 months we have been contacting centrally located rinks in the North and South conferences. We have contacted them repeatedly via multiple methods. They have not responded to us despite all of these attempts.

We are happy to announce that playoffs will be at the Cornerstone Community Center in DePere, Wisconsin(just outside of Green Bay).

The Cornerstone Community Center is located in the Ashwaubenon Sports Complex and the address is 1640 Fernando Dr., De Pere, WI 54115.

The dates for playoffs are March 27th, 28th and 29th 2020. Please read the items below to get a better understanding of how we arrived at this decision.

The rink uses Livebarn (You can watch games remotely). We will be contacting Livebarn to see if we can get a discount code for our members.

During the North scheduling meeting the Green Bay Dragons jokingly suggested we come up to the https://www.cornerstoneicecenter.org. We had a few good laughs about it and they had the rink availability list with them as Cornerstone lets them pick their times (Hint - all of their games occur during Packer games) and we had a good laugh about going up to Green Bay.

Given the fact that we had already been contacting rinks for 4 months and had no responses we actually got the information for Cornerstone. The rink responded to us immediately. They have been great to work with. We have also been in contact with the Green Bay Convention and Tourism Bureau. They are going to put together a hotel package for us to save money for all of our players that will be traveling. You will have to use the link they provide us to book your rooms and get the rate we negotiate with them.

During the playoffs last year many players commented on how much better it was to have all the games in one location instead of going from city to city to play at two different rinks the year before. There are numerous advantages to holding the tournament at one rink. One registration setup. No player confusion about which rink players need to go to. The ability to watch our friends play (and, to be frank, our opponents) is a bonus. It also helps people check out the amazing raffle.

One of the unintended benefits of so many players helping with registration and with the raffle was that some players were moving to other cities and thus were able to meet teams in those locations.

What some of you may not know is that more and more of our WCHL teams are losing ice times to youth hockey. The fastest growing youth sport in the United States is girls youth hockey. What a great problem to have.

Cornerstone Community Center has three sheets of ice and has been hosting USAH Nationals tournaments for several years now. The Convention and Tourism Bureau is also working with us to streamline hotel booking. We are very happy to be getting so much support from the city of Green Bay. We have never had a city do so much to entice the WCHL to come to them.

This may be our best tournament yet. So.... Mark your calendars. We know that every year the tournament falls on Spring Break for players at Universities or for players that have kids in school. We wish there was a perfect weekend for every team in the league.

Congratulations Green Bay!!!! So glad that you playfully prodded us to check out Cornerstone.

Registration is open!!!!!!!!!!! Click on the link above this notice.

Please note: We had a couple of hundred players from last season that have not yet signed up. we ask the demographic questions as this will help us to apply for grants in the future. We need to know how long people have been playing hockey recreationally, in youth hockey as well as in the WCHL. We will always ask the questions about being a volunteer for the WCHL.

We were set to have the registration up and running by tomorrow per the Annual meeting last night. I will know in the morning if we will still be able to meet that deadline. The earliest I foresee registration being available will be tomorrow evening after 6pm Central Standard Time.

If your team name does not pull down in registration, please complete your registration by selecting another team in your club. We are asking SportsEngine to fix that question(we cannot alter registration directly). The Board places all players on a roster, this question just helps to speed things up on our end.

Over the last two years the WCHL Board became aware of situations where USAH Insurance coverage was initially denied because a scoresheet had players that were not on a USAH Certified Roster. Not only did this cause concern for the injured party, the rink was warned that they may lose their USAH insurance for not enforcing USAH guidelines. Most of us hate rules until we discover that because of someone breaking the rules we are now in financial jeopardy.

Essentially a scoresheet becomes an evidentiary document in the case of injury. If you use nicknames, maiden names or other names, everyone in the rink risks not being covered.

The other piece is that, per USAH rules, every team has the right to request legal ID checks from a referee. If the legal name is not on the scoresheet, that player will be ineligible to play in that game.

There have been no formal complaints of players that are not supposed to be playing in a game. However this has been mentioned in passing to several teams and has filtered up to the Board.

If you suspect that you are playing against someone that is not on the certified roster, you have every right to ask your referee to verify legal ID. This is a USAH rule. It exists because USAH has seen it happen numerous times.

Using a full legal name is not an onerous burden. We also acknowledge that many people have an aversion to their given name. Feel free to ADD your chosen name in the following manner Jane "Bugsy" Smith. This way everyone is covered and Bugsy (nobody ever knew her name was Jane) gets the recognition she deserves.

Registration FAQ

All questions regarding difficulty with accessing the website should be directed to the online support provided by SportsEngine. WCHL is content only.

1) I cannot open the registration, what should I do?

Option 1: If you are having any difficulties with registration, please follow the first rule of computer technology - quit your browser and try the website again.

Option 2 Restart computer

Option 3 Choose a different browser

Option 4 Choose a different device.

Option 5 is ask SPORTSENGINE tech support, not the WCHL.

2) My team name does not appear in the registration, how can I complete my registration?

Answer: Fill out your registration to the best of your abilities. If your team name does not appear, select another division in your club or pick another team in your division. This functions solely as a quick reference for us. This is non-binding. The volunteers on the Board match players to their teams using this registration question to speed up the process.

3) I am playing on two teams this year, do I have to tell both teams that I intend to double roster?

Answer: Yes, yes you do. If you do not tell both teams that you intend to double roster, they may lose one of their planned double roster spots because you did not notify them of your intent.

4) Are teams responsible for informing the Board that they will have double rostered players and get approval for those double rosters?

Answer: Yes. If you plan on double rostering players, you must follow the WCHL bylaws regarding double rostering. Players/Goalies can only be in neighboring divisions. If you are a club, with multiple teams and some are not in neighboring divisions, you must request permission to request an exemption. It will not be automatically granted.

5) Why do double rosters matter? Too many double rostered players ultimately restrict the growth of the league. It lessens the pool of players instead of encouraging development of players starting in the lower divisions. We will also have a greater pool of higher level players now that so many more girls have played youth hockey and so many young women have now had collegiate experience. We must reach out and recruit in new ways to grow the game to match, you know, the growth of the game.

The fastest growing youth sport in the United States is girls hockey. This is the best news ever. We see so many teams devoted to developing new players. Thank you for keeping the game moving forward.

6) Preliminary Seeding Rosters have been sent in. How do we make changes to those rosters?

Answer: All changes made to rosters must be sent to the Board for approval. Many hours are spent reviewing these rosters, looking at players history in the league, looking at performance in playoffs, checking major shifts in team rosters year-to-year as well as requests for placement. We have to get these out to you as fast as possible so that you have an idea who is in your Division. Any changes made after that process could dramatically alter placement in a Division.

Our recommendation remains this: Before you add any player to your roster, make them come to a practice or an exhibition game first. Many players either downplay their skill(so many women do) or on exceedingly rare occasion, they think they should be on a Wheaties box. You will not know until you see them skate if they are appropriate for your team.

Let the 2019/2020 Season activities commence!

It is that time of year again. A full League meeting will be held this Sunday, August 18th at the Triphahn Center. the Center is located at 1685 W. Higgins Road, Hoffman Estates, IL 60169.We have rented a room from 1:30 - 3:30 pm. 

The Board has met several times during the offseason to prepare for the 2019/2020 season. Part of that preparation involves the Board looking at what issues came up during the previous season and discussing ways in which the bylaws can help to clarify things going forward.

During the annual meeting we will discuss these potential changes. We want to do what is best for the League as a whole and to keep the league growing.

Our website overlords say our registration will be completed on the 22nd of August. Per the request of many of you, we have asked them to eliminate the vast majority of the youth hockey questions that were attached. We eliminated many of them but not all from last years registration.

The North/South Conferences have been combined under one tab. This will allow us to manage playoffs without having to spend additional money on the tournament package from SportsEngine. Once we explained to them that we are not running an invitational tournament and this is the extension of our regular season they said this would be the fastest, easiest and least expensive route for our league.

Players and coaches will be registering for the upcoming season. Thanks to all that registered last year. It made scorekeeping much easier. This year we will be running our entire season via SportsEngine. We will have statisticians that will enter the data weekly and the conference reps will verify the data and review scoresheets per their oversight responsibilities.

This will allow us as a league to verify eligibility quickly. It will also give us tools to manage double rostering in ways that were unavailable to us before technology aided us. We will be looking at features that will allow you to enter scores at the end of your games and then the stats will be entered on our end after you submit your scoresheet.

Speaking of scoresheets. WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!!

Scoresheets must be sent as attachments. They must be legible. They must be filled out properly. They must be sent oriented so that our volunteers can open and enter them without having to rotate them. It is not fair to ask volunteers (your fellow players) to do extra work. They will have weeks where they are entering attendance and game stats for a few hundred players. Please be kind, rewind.

If you are looking to help the Board or League in any manner, please let us know. last years tournament was a ton of fun. It was great to be under one roof. See so many amazing humans play at every level from beginner to seasoned player. The raffle was a resounding success thanks to you and it helped our league be in the black.

If we do not see you Sunday, see you on the ice. We need all the rosters in so that we can properly set Divisions for the coming season. Clubs from as far away as Nebraska have made inquiries about skating against some of our teams so the league is getting noticed. More collegiate programs spring up and create more opportunities for women everywhere.

"It's a Great Day for Hockey"

Bob Johnson

As the vast majority of you are well aware, the old WCHL website is not valid for the 2018/2019 or 2019/2020 season. This is the ONLY site that will be updated.

The Women's Central Hockey League (WCHL) is an 18+ recreational ice hockey league dedicated to encouraging women – regardless of talent or experience – to participate in travel women's hockey. We really are a recreational league. Truly. While many of us would love to play collegiate hockey or in the NWHL or CWHL we are not a venue for you to be recruited by any of those teams (We know several NCAA coaches, they are not coming to games or looking at our stats to see who the next recruit will be. They might join our Division 1 for fun, but that is it.)

More commonly known as the WCHL, the league has grown to include over 40 member teams from Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri and Indiana. The league is comprised of adult women's recreational teams. There are a handful of collegiate teams that participate in Divisions 1 - 7 based upon the structure of their team.

The season begins in late September and runs though the end of March at playoffs. All games, must be concluded two weeks prior to playoffs. If you need to schedule a make-up game it can be scheduled that second weekend before playoffs if you request an exemption from the Board.

The league contains seven divisions in two conferences, the North and the South. Teams are divided by approximate skill level. Division 1 typically is for former collegiate players. Division 7 is for people that have never skated or never played hockey or both of those things.

D1 – Advanced - former or current collegiate NCAA Division I - III, club players or those with formal hockey training of 10+ years

D2 – Lower Advanced - Former high school, collegiate club players or those with formal hockey training of 8+ years

D3 – High intermediate  - former high school or long time adult players or those with formal hockey training of U14

D4 – Intermediate -  little to no high school experience but wow they can skate with a puck and lift with ease, may have hockey up to U-12

D5 – Low intermediate - Hey, they can carry the puck, look up and pass, skate backwards, lift the puck for a shot about half the time may have had formal hockey training up to U - 8

D6 – Beginner/Novice Wow, you can totally hockey stop now, you can even send a tape-to-tape pass on occasion. You can transition from front to back without falling, mostly.

D7 – Beginner How do I tie these skates? Which way do I face when we get on the ice? Why did I wait so long to try this insanely awesome sport?
 

2019 WCHL Championship Rules

Playoff fees must be paid prior to the first played game.

Players must sign in and show ID before EVERY game.

2019 WCHL Championship rules will carry over from the regular season with the following changes:

Game Times

1. All periods will be 12 minutes in length with a 3 minute warm up before the first period.

2. There will be a running clock in the 3rd period, if there is a 5 goal lead.

3. Your team must be dressed and ready to play 20 minutes prior to start of game.(USAH rule)

Time-Outs

One Time Out per team, per game.

Penalties

Penalties are 1:30 in length.

Referee will tell you the major penalty length.

Final Standings

1. Point System: Round Robin (3 pt system):

Regulation win=3pts, Tie=1 pt, Regulation loss=0 pt

2. Should a team forfeit a game it will result in a win for the non-forfeiting team. The non-forfeiting team will be awarded one goal for the forfeited game (score will show 1-0).

3. The following tie breakers will be applied, first head-to-head competition, then against other pool opponents :

A. Most points (as stated above)

B. Fewest goals against

C. Largest goal differential (goals for less goals against)

D. Largest goal quotient (goals for divided by goals against)

E. Fewest losses

F. Most wins

G. Least penalties

H. Coin toss

Game Tie-Breakers

1. Round robin games can end in a tie.

2. Championship games will use the following tie breakers:

A. One 5 minute overtime will be played (5 on 5).

B. If still tied, a 5 woman shootout will be used.

C. If still tied, sudden death shootout will be used, until one team scores and the other doesn’t.

D. Players may not repeat until the entire roster has been used.

E. Once a team has used the entire roster in the shootout (even if the other has not), both teams may start over with the first shooter.

We have entered stats for several games in the North. Sadly, they are not populating to the standings boxes. We have a help ticket in to SportsEngine to address ASAP.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

The Board

Roster review is still plugging along. We have focused our efforts on teams that have had games. Every single team has updated their roster since the scheduling meeting and there have been numerous questions since the bylaw updates.

Teams have always had to inform the Board when they have added a player and no player could be in a game until the Board was notified. The Board has always reviewed said additions to ensure, to the best of our ability, that any roster addition does not dramatically alter the level of play in a Division.

In past years, the season did not start until early to mid November. Now the season starts at the end of September and it puts a ton more pressure on the beginning of the season. What this means is that for next years season you will have to contact your players earlier. Some teams have told us that they are asking for deposits from their players on June 1st. The sooner you set your teams and send a preliminary roster to the WCHL, the more time we have to properly place teams in divisions.

If you are interested in volunteering as a scoresheet person for either the North or South conferences please contact the Board using one of the helpful links on the website.

Teams

Illinois https://www.ahai.org/

Wisconsin http://www.waha-hockey.com/

Missouri https://mohockeyyd.sportsengine-prelive.com/mohockeyydhome

Iowa/Kansa/Nebraska https://www.tristatehockey.com/

Players and Coaches

Player or Coach USA Hockey (player registration)

The South Scheduling Meeting will be:

Saturday, September 7th. 2019 12:00pm

Location:

Tilted Kilt

1140 E Higgins Road

Schaumburg, IL 

The North Meeting will be:

Sunday, September 8th at 11:00am

Location:

BW3

121 N. Pioneer Road

Fond du Lac, WI

The North Conference sends their scoresheets to

wchlnorthscoresheets@gmail.com

The South Conference sends their scoresheets to

wchlsouthscoresheets@gmail.com