I Love Not Sleeping

Like the team in both always stay together and move up the age bracket together and keep the same coaches.

But what if someone new tries out? What about the coaches, do they coach all the levels? How long are they Ducks for? What if they enter Bantum level? Or like, that level right before Juniors? Do they all still stay together? Also the team is still co-ed when they hit the next bracket, which is full contact??? I know for diversity sake they need girls present, but isn’t that the point they ~usually~ split the teams up by gender? With a team as competitive as the Ducks, I’m sure they have enough of both to create each team.

Like I said, I’ve never played hockey on an organized team before or anything, so I am genuinely looking for answers from people who have-

Now keep in mind that this is Disney, so a lot of it is kind of bullshit but I can actually buy some of the things that you’re asking about. Depending on the size and level of the club, teams are split into either two year age groups or one year age groups, and kids will just move up in the brackets as they age. Generally if you have a good thing going with the team you’re on age groups will stay with the same core groups of kids as they age, adding or losing kids as they try out or change teams and whatnot. So far things in Game Changers mostly checks out, except I would think in Minnesota and with how prestigious the Ducks are said to be now, they would have a 12, a 13, and a 14 team, instead of a “12 to 14 age group division” (it’s called U14 or Bantams).

Coaching will also depend on the organization, so it is possible for one coach to stick with the same group of kids for as long as they want, but some organizations will rotate different coaches for different age groups so kids get new coaches every year. And sometimes a parent of a kid on the team will coach, depending on if they have the right experience to coach. I’ve had a lot of coaches that were parents of other girls in the team, as well as coaches that are employed by the organization, so it just depends. However it’s not like anyone can just hop on the ice with zero experience playing hockey like Alex is doing. Usually if a kids parent coaches it’s either at a lower level or they have a lot of experience playing or coaching hockey. That’s a little bit weird, but again it’s Disney so you can kind of forgive a lot of it.

When it comes to full contact, in my experience, if a girl is good enough to play in the guys team skills-wise and she and her parents are comfortable with checking, girls can totally play on the “boys” teams. In Game Changers they’re finally in the age group where they can do checking so it’s common for girls that had up until that point played boys to switch to an all-girls team. Again, with as competitive as the Ducks are they absolutely have girls teams at that age group, but the story isn’t about them so we won’t see them. So again it just depends on the girl, if anything it just makes the girls who continue playing boys even more badass because they have to learn how to hit and receive hits without hurting themselves or others. (Also it’s easier for girls who are goalies to play at higher levels of boys hockey because there are rules surrounding goalies that mostly protect them from all the checking)