OMHA Boundaries

Each day visitors arrive at this blog looking for information regarding OMHA boundaries, player movement and residency rules.  Should this be the best place to look? I think not!  It should be the OMHA.  Here's what the OMHA website tells us:

"What are the Residency Regulations for minor hockey?


The residency regulations govern the location your child plays competitive minor hockey in order to maintain a fair and competitive player development system. Residency regulations are defined by boundaries based on your home residence.
Recreational or House League players do not abide by Residency Regulations since they participate in competitive hockey.
Competitive or Rep players may appeal the residency regulation under certain circumstances. Other Rep players within the “Lake Ontario Region” have other regulations pertaining to tryouts.

What if our family has moved?

If your family moved from one OMHA association to another OMHA association since the last time your child [ren] participated in minor hockey, you are required to have an OMHA Residential Questionnaire completed and approved.
If your family moved from an area governed by another OHF Member Partner [GTHL, Alliance, OMHA, NOHA] since the last time your child [ren] participated in minor hockey you are required to have an OHF Residential Transfer completed and approved.
Each form is available to download at www.omha.net and be sure to ask your new association about this process when registering for the upcoming season. This will ensure that there are no delays in your child playing with their new association, especially if they will be participating in programming that is residentially restricted.
Team Officials should contact their local hockey association to ensure their records are up-to-date while Officials should contact the OMHA office."
This is at:
http://www.omha.net/flash.asp?page_id=413#FAQ15

There is a download booklet at http://www.omha.net/admin/downloads/11-OHF-OMHA.pdf which explains what Hockey Canada, The Ontario Hockey Federation and OMHA are. I thought that the following membership info was interesting:




"The following is the registered membership breakdown

for each OHF Member Partner based on the

2006-2007 insurance assessments.

Member Partners Registered players

Alliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23,457

GTHL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36,392

NOHA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10,893

OHA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2,944

OHL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477

OMHA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111,193

OWHA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36,326

TOTAL 221,682"



If you have registered for hockey already this year - you may be signing in through a Hockey Canada registration system. This registration system provided by Hockey Canada – keeps a record of your child in the location in which you are registering them. This is billed as a way to help your local organization be more administratively efficient and a few other benefits..... What it does is lock down player movement. If you try to move your child to another city to play hockey, there is a record of them in another location and you can’t register unless you go through some administrative work to transfer them.

“Hockey Canada Registry
Hockey Canada has recently developed a national database of all of our members. The database complies with our Privacy Policy while at the same time providing a sophisticated administrative tool. Access to this system is free with membership. Hockey Canada is only beginning to realize the full benefits of this system in the administration of hockey in this country and we are confident that our members will find this to be an invaluable resource. The ability to track players, suspensions, volunteer education, team statistics and the demographics of our members is an administrative advantage you simply cannot get anywhere else without paying a substantial fee."
This is also at http://www.omha.net/flash.asp?page_id=413#FAQ15
So once you have your child in this registry, you can't just sneak on over to the GTHL or another town without getting some sort of transfer.  That's a whole other story....

Do you have any experiences with transferring?  Please comment..