TAHA High School Gold Division State Tournament

As in tradition, TAHA is holding the High School State Tournament this year in conjunction with the High School League, with the top 4 teams from the Gold division competing for a spot at USA Hockey Nationals.

One thing you will notice is a change in game format this year. TAHA got more involved in this tournament to ensure the games are played as prescribed by the USA Hockey Nationals Guidebook, which includes different period times (17-minute periods), a Zam between the 2nd and 3rd periods, and a different overtime structure than regular season games.

If you’d like to come out and see some great high school hockey, here is the final schedule:

To clarify the structure, this tournament follows the same format as the TAHA 14U, 16U, and 18U Youth State Tournaments that lead to USA Hockey Nationals: with round robin games leading to the top 2 seeds playing in a one game, winner take all, to be crowned State Champions! The State Champion will represent Texas at USA Hockey Nationals.

TAHA has been in discussion with the Stars and the High School League since the beginning of the season about this change. The league would run its end-of-season tournament, but not a State-identified tournament as those games do not lead to a National event as all others do. The Stars/League had initially indicated they would be willing to run the 2A and 2B tournament, as has been done before, including Houston teams. However, over the past few weeks, they have changed their mind and will run their league championships as usual, but did not see a need to hold a separate tournament a couple of weeks later with the same teams involved.

TAHA acknowledges this is a change to what has gone on in the past few seasons, but also agrees this is in-line with TAHA State Tournaments structure and youth league structures with TAHA

If there are any questions feel free to contact me.

Mark Servaes

TAHA President

president@tahahockey.org