Youth & College Showcases coming in 2025!
We are happy to introduce Youth& College Showcases at select events in 2025! At US Roller Cup, we believe that roller hockey lacks the kind of infrastructure commonly seen in more developed sports. These Showcase events will create the sense of a fully functioning system for roller hockey that leads players from amateur youth play to college scholarships. We have our first Youth & College Showcase events scheduled to take place during our Witner Nationals event this upcoming March 7-9, 2025 in Snellville, GA at SGAA.
College Showcases
The College Showcases are chances for current college programs to compete for scholarship prizes that they are able to award to their players the following season. This means that the players that receive these scholarships will be a mix of returning players and incoming players. We believe that programs that are early adopters in this system will be rewarded with the ability to jumpstart building the next generation of their programs.
US Roller Cup will not have any restrictions on programs competing in the College Showcases, as long as they are college roller hockey teams. This means that teams from D1 all the way to Club will be able to compete for these scholarships. These events are even open to brand new college roller hockey teams, that haven't competed anywhere yet. This means that teams from all over the country will be competing for scholarships and awarding them the following season. If we are able to do three College Showcase events this season, then it is possible there will be up to 9 programs offering scholarships next year that aren't this year. We believe that these Showcases will radically change the landscape of college roller hockey over the next few years.
All scholarship will be won through a purely competitive basis.
Programs will be able to add their own stipulations and contingencies to scholarships. For example, a team may require a certain GPA or attendance record in order to receive a scholarship.
The coach of each program will be able to decide which players receive scholarships and how much they receive. If a program does not have a coach the upcoming season, then their scholarship prize will be divided evenly between all rostered players for the following season.
Our first College Showcase event will happen on March 7-9, 2025 at our Winter Nationals event. This particular Showcase will be 1 cent to the first 4 teams that sign up. We are doing this because we want to support the teams that are our early adopters, and we recognize the constraints on college programs having to compete the weekend prior. However, any teams that sign up after the initial 4 will have to pay a registration fee.
Youth Showcases
Our Youth Showcases will be an opportunity for players that are interested in playing college roller hockey to get scouted and ranked. Initially, we will focus on 18u and 16u age division (2006-2009) birthyears for our groups at these events. As the events fill and grow, we will split the groups into 18u & 16u, and then by birthyear. Players will compete in three games, consisting of three 15-minute stop-clock periods. Players will be drafted in to separate teams for the event. These games will be filmed, with the footage made available to all players. These games will be scouted by teams of scouts paid for by US Roller Cup. Scouts will observe multiple players throughout a game, and players will receive separate scouting reports for each game that they play in.
Players will be evaluated in a number of categories (skating, stickhandling, etc.) on a scale of 1-5 in each category (1-well below average, 2-below average, 3-average, 4-above average, 5-well above average). Goalie scouts will be goalies themselves. These scouting reports will be used to create a number of stats for each player including things like overall rating, average scout ratings for each skill, and the strength of rating for their scouting reports. The strength of rating will be an important metric to pay attention to because it will show the degree to which scouts agreed or disagreed in their ratings of the player.
All of this data will then be used to create the US Roller Cup Prospect Ranking System, where players will be able to be sorted by all the metrics gathered. Therefore, players that participate in these events will be able to go to college programs and show them real, meaningful data that supports their bid to play college roller hockey.
Not only will players be able to walk away from these events being ranked and having access to footage from the Showcase, but they will also be playing in front of college programs due to the fact that our College Showcase will be happening at the same event. This means that college programs that are actively competing for scholarships to give to their players the following season will also be scouting and networking with high school players that are looking to make the jump to the next level. It also means that players that come to the Youth Showcases will receive nearly direct access to this new crop of programs that will be able to offer scholarships. We believe that having the Youth & College Showcases happening at the same time will act as an accelerator in getting kids into college roller hockey programs.