Tri-Valley High Schoolers to Make Nor Cal Hockey History

When is the last time you attended a high school hockey game in California? Chances are never, unless you moved to California from the east coast or Canada. That's about to change.

Thanks to the efforts of William Stone, President of the Tri-Valley Minor Hockey Association, hockey players from three Tri-Valley high schools are going to make Northern California hockey history.

The teams aren't affiliated with the schools, they're just made up of local students.

"About four years ago we got interested in high school hockey," said Stone. "The only way we could do high school hockey at the time was to get kids that were in high school and put them together on one team that we call a 'mixed team.'"

"Within the last year I looked at our roster, since we have such a big base of hockey players, and I noticed that there were several schools that had a lot of players. With that information I put together three teams ... where each team has players from a single school."

For the first time, students from , , and are going to compete on the rink, joining kids from five other California private high schools that have been fielding hockey teams for several years.

While minor hockey has existed for many years in California, it is only very recently that students could represent their high school on the ice (like they can for many other sports).

TVMHA President Stone found that three public high schools (Cal High, Dublin High and San Ramon Valley High) have a sufficient number of players to field competitive hockey teams. Additionally, there are plans to create hockey clubs at each participating high school.

"My son's been play hockey for eight years and we just found out that Dublin High's going to have a hockey team, and he's so excited even though he's only in seventh grade and I'm excited as a parent that he'll be able to play the sport that he's loved for ever for his high school," said hockey parent and Dublin Unified School District Trustee Amy Miller.

The season is scheduled to run from October to February, with each team playing 10 games. Game locations are still being finalized and will likely include rinks in Oakland, San Jose, Fremont, Dublin and Vacaville.

There are new rules in USA Hockey, California Amateur Hockey Assocation, and the Northern California Junior Hockey Association (Norcal) that allow players to play high school hockey without penalty from their existing travel teams. In fact, players can potentially go to the high school nationals and tier nationals during one season.

The Tri-Valley Minor Hockey Association has over 360 members and provides local hockey players at all levels an opportunity to hone their skills and compete on the ice. TVMHA is based at .

Stone said he hopes to expand the league in future years.

The full list of teams for the 2011-12 season is:

• Archbishop Mitty High School 
• Bellarmine College Preparatory
• California High School
• JSerra Catholic High School
• Santa Margarita Catholic High School
• Valley Christian High School

Editor's note: We changed the story a bit to clarify that the hockey teams aren't officially affiliated with the above-mentioned schools. Although the students attend those schools, they don't officially represent them as hockey players. "The only sports we sponsor are CIF – NCS sanctioned, and ice hockey is not one of them," San Ramon Valley Unified School District spokesman Terry Koehne wrote in an email.

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