Sweet Laxin Tournament Review

This is the third tournament review for this summer's tournaments. This is for the Sweet Laxin' tournament in Bridgewater, New Jersey. This is my second time at Sweet Laxin'.

Sweet Laxin' does most things pretty well but has a couple bumps as well.

The tournament is spread out over various locations in the area. Some folks are put off by that but it doesn't really bother me. I am fine with spreading people around. We had plenty of parking and access was good. There was a little walk to the fields but nothing out of hand. The organizers do an excellent job of having volunteers around to direct traffic.

Unfortunately, there was a field issue at our facility. One of the fields was significantly undersized. When that happens, usually the goal is moved closer to the end line and the restraining area shrinks. The organizers instead used a full-sized restraining area that was way too close to the face-off X. Play on that field had a serious problem for every faceoff.

The play format worked well. There were pools for each dvision and A & B flights for most age groups. Teams play maybe three games on Saturday and then get seeded into Sunday's semifinals followed by finals and consols. The organizers seemed to get the pools pretty much right because Sunday's games had some absolute crackers. Win or lose, teams really like having a good competitive game or two on their way out.

The concessions were adequate if unspectacular. Unfortunately grills were not allowed.

I give the tournament a B+ overall.

Jersey Shootout Tournament Review

Trying to catch up on my tournament reviews. Next up was the Jersey Shootout in Metuchen. This was my first time at this tournament.

The Jersey Shootout is definitely a mixed bag. It probably was my least favorite tournament of the year. That probably says more about the quality of the other tournaments than this one, nevertheless it's hard to give this tournament a lot of props.

The tournament was at St. Joseph's High School and the facility causes a lot of problems. Usually, a facility that is hard to get to has a lot of parking or a facility that is easy to might have a paring shortage. This facility is both: (a) hard to get to; and (b) very short on parking. Even coming from relatively short distance and leaving plenty of time we sat in quite a bit of traffic and then had to walk quite a distance through a couple neighborhoods to get to the fields. Fortunately, once we got there, the fields were flat and in pretty good shape.

The format was twenty-five minute halves in pools and then an extra game against the corresponding place team in another pool. This is where I noticed a real problem. I recognize that there is a certain amount of guesswork involved in seeding teams, but we ended up with wildly diverging team quality. One pool was pretty much stacked with good teams; the other pool had one very strong team and three weak ones. Of course the good teams beat up on each other and a dark horse team snuck through to the final on a tie-breaker. That team got destroyed in the final and the rest of the strong bracket did a number on the rest of the weaker pool. You hope by the end of the day to get a pretty even game but that wasn't happeing this time.

No grills allowed at this venue. We brought in pizza for our team and skipped the concessions.

I'll give the tournament a B- and frankly hope to skip it next year.