The Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association voted 123-39 Sunday in favour of banning body checking from all recreational, or house level leagues, starting next season.
Pacific Coast will also confer with B.C. Hockey and may still eliminate body checking from peewee (ages 11-12) rep hockey, as well.
Body checking is already banned in house hockey in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and PEI. Quebec has also banned hitting in peewee rep hockey, and Ontario is considering doing the same, as is U.S.A. Hockey.
B.C. Hockey is to deal with body checking in peewee rep in June.
Ridge Meadows Minor Hockey Association, after polling parents, split its votes on banning body checking at house and peewee rep levels.
Numerous kids have missed time this season due to injuries – many the result of body contact, some just freak accidents.
But make no mistake, this decision is about brains, protecting young players from bruises and bruisers, about keeping the game safe and fun for them, so they have a future beyond the sport.
The size discrepancies among minor hockey players today is obvious within the age divisions from atom to midget, not just peewee. Many of them, mostly the smaller ones, play with fear – evident in their eyes and the way they shy away from pucks. Some, so overwhelmed after getting hit high, yet again, lie on the ice, crying. Some quit, as declining registration numbers across the country attest.
Taking out body checking will not eliminate such fear or all harm, nor will it eliminate all contact. But, as studies in Alberta and Ontario have shown, it will reduce injuries – particularly concussions – by two-thirds.
Some will argue that physical contact is part of the game, and those who don’t like it should just play soccer. But that is a dinosaur mentality.
Whereas once players just shook off the fogginess after taking a big hit, such symptoms now sideline players indefinitely, even end careers.
And it’s not just headaches and dizziness, professional players like Mark Savard still suffer from memory loss. Studies have linked brain injuries to depression. Yet, the NHL still lets its players pound each other in the head. For some reason they still leave their feet and target an opponent’s head.
The issue here isn’t so much body checking as it is awareness and respect. What needs to change is attitudes.
Coaches and parents must help young players understand the repercussions of their actions.
Players need more training on how to check, angling their bodies, using their sticks, not just their shoulders – and how to not just take a hit, but avoid one, to spin off or stop short, to protect themselves.
It must be mandatory, enforced by minor hockey associations and not just left up to individual coaches, many of them well-meaning volunteers who never played the game and know only of body checking from what they learned at a weekend clinic, during which such contact is covered in a thick manual they are expected to read.
So some teams hit to intimidate, not just separate.
Furthermore, the officials who police the game, many of whom are teenagers, must be empowered to call the game as they see it, to protect the players, without fear of being reprimanded the moment he or she blows the whistle. They need more training, more supervision, more protection. We need more of them.
Much more needs to be done. Taking body checking out of the game will hopefully give the governing bodies of the sport more time to figure it out.
– The Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News
