Club Evaluations
Just like that, the season is upon us, and KRA Club evaluations begin on September 9. The complete list of Club and Zone evaluation ice times is available on the Ice Schedule page.
This season, KRA is also working with the Westside Ringette Association [WRA] to conduct combined Club evaluations of KRA and WRA athletes for most sessions. Athletes from both associations will be evaluated together using the same Ringette BC criteria and evaluation process.
A big thank-you as well to everyone who has volunteered to help with evaluations this season. These sessions take a lot of people to run well, and we really appreciate the members who have stepped up to help make the process possible.
Before evaluations begin, here are the most important things every family needs to know.
Please plan to attend all evaluation sessions
Players should plan to attend all scheduled Club evaluation sessions. Exception: If a player is attending Zone evaluations, they should not attend Club evaluation sessions.
Ringette BC’s standard evaluation process calls for:
- U12: one skills evaluation session
- U14, U16 and U19: two skills evaluation sessions
KRA also schedules a scrimmage for each division to provide additional game-play evaluation and support team formation. Please make every effort to attend the scrimmage as well.
Please review the ice schedule carefully and make sure you have all of your athlete’s evaluation dates and times noted. If you know your athlete will be unable to attend one of their scheduled sessions, please let us know as soon as possible.
Important: for families who have submitted a player movement request
If you have submitted a player movement request, your athlete must attend the required evaluations in both their registered age division and the division they have requested to move to.
This is a requirement of Ringette BC’s Player Movement Policy. If the required evaluation process is not followed, the player movement request must be denied and that automatic denial is not grounds for appeal. KRA does not have discretion to waive this requirement. Our role is to administer the process and ensure the Ringette BC policy is followed consistently.
If your athlete has requested a move-up, please check the ice schedule especially carefully and make sure you have noted the evaluation sessions for both divisions.
Additional Information About Club Evaluations
Last season, evaluations, team formation and player movement were among the areas that generated the most feedback from KRA families. A common theme was the need for the process to be clearer and better explained, so we’ve included some additional background below about how Club evaluations work and how the results are used.
If this is your first evaluation season
You may notice that the ice schedule includes both Club evaluations and Zone evaluations.
Zone evaluations are coordinated by the Thompson Okanagan Ringette League [TORL], with assistance from KRA and other associations. Club evaluations are coordinated by KRA. That is why both types of evaluation sessions appear together on the KRA ice schedule.
For Club evaluations, your athlete will check in at the arena and receive a pinny with an assigned colour and number. Evaluators use that colour and number to identify athletes on the ice.
During the skills evaluation sessions, coaches will run athletes through standard evaluation session plans developed by Ringette BC. These sessions are designed to give evaluators an opportunity to observe the skills included in the performance criteria for each age division.
The Club evaluation process is:
- U12: one skills evaluation session and one scrimmage - two sessions in total
- U14, U16 and U19: two skills evaluation sessions and one scrimmage - three sessions in total
For the scrimmage session, your athlete may be assigned a different pinny colour and number than they used during the skills sessions. This is normal. Athletes should always use the pinny assigned to them for that particular session and return it to the check-in table when the session is finished.
Evaluators will be watching specific groups of athletes and scoring what they observe against the Ringette BC criteria. Athletes do not need to do anything differently because they are being evaluated - they should simply participate in the drills and scrimmage as they normally would.
Speaking of evaluators, KRA and WRA make a number of efforts to keep the evaluation process as fair and consistent as possible within the resources available to the associations. Evaluators must meet Ringette BC’s experience requirements, and Ringette BC’s Evaluation Manual states that parents of athletes being evaluated are ineligible to act as evaluators.
We also design the evaluation schedule so that, wherever practical, an athlete is assessed by a different evaluator at each session. That gives us more than one perspective on each athlete and helps reduce the influence any single evaluator may have on the final result.
What are athletes being evaluated on?
The skills being assessed become progressively more advanced as athletes move through the divisions.
U12 focuses on foundational skating and ringette skills, along with basic offensive and defensive game skills. U14 adds more game-play elements, while U16 and U19 share a more advanced set of criteria that places greater emphasis on game play, positioning, teamwork and game sense.
If you would like to review the Ringette BC performance criteria and evaluation scorecards in advance, they are available on the Ringette BC Player Evaluations page.
Why do we do evaluations?
Ringette BC requires Club evaluations as part of the team formation process.
For KRA, the results are used to:
- support the review of player movement requests
- help ensure athletes are placed in the appropriate divisions
- support team formation decisions
- give coaches an opportunity to see potential new players on the ice before the season begins
The scores from the evaluation sessions are combined into a player ordinal, which gives KRA a consistent way to compare athletes who were evaluated under similar conditions at the same point in time.
What is a player ordinal?
A player ordinal is a number derived from the athlete’s evaluation scores. The individual evaluation criteria are scored on a 1-to-5 scale, and those results are combined to produce the player ordinal.
The important thing to understand is that an ordinal is not a grade, report card, or measure of year-over-year improvement.
A player ordinal is a snapshot of an athlete’s performance at a particular point in time. Many things can influence that snapshot: whether an athlete was having a particularly good or difficult day, fatigue, equipment and skate conditions, ice conditions...and even the evaluators themselves, who are ultimately making skilled subjective observations against objective criteria.
For that reason, player ordinals are most useful as a point-in-time comparison among athletes being evaluated under similar circumstances. That is why they are useful for processes such as player movement and team formation. They are not a perfect measurement, but they provide a consistent framework for comparing athletes as fairly as we reasonably can.
Will families receive their athlete’s ordinal?
Generally, no. Bear with us here, because this is a question we receive frequently.
Ringette BC requires individual player ordinals to be kept confidential. KRA is therefore not permitted to routinely release player ordinals, evaluator scorecards or detailed evaluation results to families. There are limited circumstances where an ordinal may be disclosed as part of a specific process, such as a player movement request. Outside of those circumstances, the ordinal remains an internal evaluation and team-formation metric.
There is a good reason for that. Ordinals are not intended to become an ongoing scoring system that follows an athlete from season to season, or a number against which athletes compare themselves [or are compared to one another] throughout their amateur ringette careers.
For families, a much more meaningful measure of development is what you and your athlete see over the course of the season: improvement in skills, confidence, decision-making, contribution to the team, and feedback from coaching staff.
In short: please don’t judge your athlete by their ordinal. It was never intended to serve that purpose.
Good luck this season!
Aaron Heck
Vice President
vicepresident@kelownaringette.com
