President's Message Feb. 8 2007

Players, Parents and Coaches:

Before you are a synopsis of the discussions with the Alliance, OMHA and Independent Leagues in order to keep the CYO alive and well.

The entire letter below was communicated to your coaches and managers to relay to you the Membership of the CYO. We had this meeting in attempt to keep you all informed, however I can see by the posts on some forums that this was not done. The executive of the CYO had no intentions of keeping anyone in the dark and if anyone asked other executive members or myself we shared whatever information we had. Having said that we could not have a parent meeting to make any decisions until we have all the correct and full information to share with you.

Before I start let me remind you we are all in this together, if this fails it will not only affect the children of Oshawa but also those from the surrounding areas. The executive is trying to put something’s together at this time to support members from all of the surrounding Durham areas.
Collectively we have negotiated and fought and today we are considering a Independent League as this is the only way we can ensure all our players continue to play non residential hockey, something you as parents have told us you want.
Telling you something and then changing it a few days latter would not be productive. We have asked Gerry Hickey as well as some other former members of the executive to join us in this fight for survival and under Gerry’s advise we have cancelled the Parent meeting until we have had some more time to put things together. Once this is done we will have a meeting and you the membership will decide the fate of the CYO.

To bring everyone up to speed, in October the Alliance approached the executive and asked that the President be removed, if not they would pull our sanction.
An emergency meeting was called and our President resigned for the betterment or our players. The Alliance was advised and Allan Donnan was elected interim President. Allan and Ron Pennington the VP of Tier I continued to meet not only with the Alliance but also with the OMHA to get commitments in writing for our program.
In December the Alliance advised Allan we would no longer be sanctioned beyond this year, stating we had violated Policy and Procedure. Allan, Ron and myself all contacted the Alliance and attempted for some time to overturn this decision. Allan took this a step further and tried to negotiate at least a 1-year transition period and was denied. At this point we were advised we would be sanctioned by the OMHA.
Let me make it clear at no time have we agreed to this and started to pursue an Independent League.

A note to all: being part of the OMHA means we would have to be residentially compliant and no children outside of Oshawa would play in our Select Program. You can play house league and that is it.
The executive as I said decided to pursue an Independent League and many emails and calls were made to the other independent leagues as well as insurance company’s, ice venues and tournaments. However we still continued to negotiate with the OMHA.
At the start of January Allan asked the executive to elect myself President as I was already running the day to day operations and he would like to concentrate on next years agenda.

Since then Allan and I have had several meetings and conversations with the OMHA and their Executive Director Richard Ropchan. All of this resulted in a meeting in Richmond Hill at the OMHA offices with both Allan and myself along with Richard and Marg Ensoll, VP Eastern District to roll out our vision of the CYO. We advised them we were looking for the same as we had now, only a Durham League, non-residential house league/select. We would play inner city and our players could be AP players to their home centres. We noted this would give players in the Durham Region whom were not of the calibre to play in their own centre Rep. Programs but better than house league a place to play and get better due to the ice time we allow our teams. We at this time I will note again advise the OMHA if this could not be accomplished we would continue on our path of and Independent League and that the OMHA was clearly not our only option.
Richard advised us that he would take this to the OMHA board for review and give us an answer. Two days latter Richard informed us the board did not make a decision however it was being sent to the member centres for a decision. Oshawa, Clarington, Whitby etc. turned down the idea instead claimed they do a great job of developing hockey players and they would be better served playing in their house leagues.

I responded as such: Richard thank you for your quick response. As discussed, I will take your proposal back to the executive and then to the parents for consideration. I explained as well as Allan in our meeting that the OMHA was not the only option and we have continued on the path that we outlined. The decision to amalgamate the CYO will be done with great consideration given to what is best for all of our members. Minor Hockey is about fun, friendship and respect not about ownership. I believe that the OMHA is not taking the aforementioned into consideration and that is why we are where we are today. The parents and players that play in the CYO came to the organisation to get something that was not provided in the local organisations and those same players and parents will have to approve a move back to the OMHA system based on the conditions you have attached. When we have a decision based on what is best for our parents and players from those same parents and players I will let you know what course of action and route the CYO will follow.
Thanks,
Joe Werheid
President Oshawa CYO

As I said before we are still pursuing an Independent League and we have asked Jerry Hickey as well as others to help us in this pursuit. Many of you have seen postings on the Oshawa sites and I have contacted the OMHA and have been assured these will be removed as they admit we have not agreed to anything with regards to our program for next year.

As you can see you clearly have three choices:
1) Go back to your home centres an play at whatever level you child can make
2) Play house league in the CYO, co-operate with the OMHA and only Oshawa residents can play Select.
3) Form and Independent League
The Executive of the CYO are recommending a Independent League as this gives us what we have today, it will not be easy but the staff and resources are already being put in place.

As we are still negotiation all of the above and have asked for the help, we will not have the parent meeting next week but will do so when everything is in place.

In Closing, 53 years ago Bob Black started the CYO as a Non Residential League to allow the Parish players to have a place to play. We will strive to continue on with this tradition, to allow players the right to choose where they play. Not to be told a centre owns them.

Thank You,
Joe Werheid
President Oshawa CYO