Moron (5 page)

The coach, of course, while shuffling across the ice, is letting a few choice words fly out of his mouth in the direction of the referees who, in his opinion, have missed a call. Unfortunately, the fact that lit­tle Johnny is lying on the ice doesn’t mean he was fouled. In this case, he had been legally checked, even though he seemed to be very hurt by the hit.

When the coach reached little Johnny, it becomes pretty clear that Johnny is terrified, scared more than anything over the fact that he’s just had this huge, huge hit; he still lay motionless on the ice. Thankfully the coach didn’t try to move him ini­tially, and he allowed Johnny to decide of his own accord whether he could move or not.

For a few minutes, all of the parents pressed up against the glass, watching, the referees stood a good distance away, and the players were all as­signed back to their benches. You could hear a pin drop in the arena, as this ten-year-old Fourth Grader was lying on the ice motionless. Thankfully, eventually Johnny was able to, of his own accord, roll over and sit up. He was visibly shaken up by this, and was in tears. He was helped to his feet, and thankfully, he was not severely injured.

This situation, in particular, ended well. Johnny returned to the bench, and a few shifts later, he was back skating. However, all too often, the out­come of such an accident is a little bit different.

Within this book so far, I’ve spoken out mostly about body checking among eleven- to twelve-year-old children in the Peewee age group. But I personally believe that there shouldn’t be body checking in any children’s leagues, except for pos­sibly the most elite groups. Hockey for 99% of the­se children is about camaraderie and enjoyment – not unlike within adult recreational, or “beer” leagues.

What is interesting is that, within beer league or recreational hockey for adults, there is no body checking. Why? Because the businesspeople who play in those leagues need to wake up the next day to go to work. Shouldn’t we be thinking the same thing about our children? If they get hit too hard, they may not be able to go to school. Isn’t there something the matter with this?

On a snowy day in Calgary, I look out my window and see kids playing on the pond that’s just over the hill. That’s what hockey is all about. It’s about kids having fun. That’s where this game came from. And it’s what we need to remember at the ice arena.

This nostalgic memory of playing on a pond out­side in the middle of the winter conflicts directly with the vision of some parents and coaches in our current environment. They want their team to win at all costs, and they want their kid to end up in the NHL and get fame and fortune. Believe it or not, this is one of the main arguments against the elimination of body checking at the Peewee level.

Some coaches and parents believe that their kids need to start learning to body check at age eleven, or they won’t be able to get into the NHL. We tested that hypothesis, and we spoke to several members of the NHL, and to other experts as well.

Hockey Calgary board had an NHL advisory board that was put together by alumni from the NHL. The general manager and I met with those individuals and asked them to be part of our advi­sory board. They attended a couple of meetings with us and on that agenda was the topic of body checking.

Every single NHL player on that advisory board said, given the data available and their personal experience, that it made no sense to keep body checking in Peewee. Not one of them argued the point of leaving it in.

After reading all of my impassioned rhetoric about the perils of body checking, you will be surprised to hear that I was the guy on the Hockey Calgary Board who didn’t want to get rid of body checking when I first saw the result of Dr. Carolyn Emery’s study.
⁴
I was the person sitting in that room saying, “You have got to be kidding me. You shouldn’t take body checking out of Peewee – you’re going to hurt the kids in the next level up, Bantam. We have to leave it in!”

We challenged Dr. Emery’s study. She had com­pared Calgary to Quebec in the first study, but she had only given us results from the Peewee age group. We wanted to see what impact the elimina­tion of body checking in Peewee would have on the kids once they reached Bantam. We thought that we might actually be creating a bigger prob­lem by eliminating body checking, because chil­dren were bigger at 13 and 14 than they were at eleven and twelve. So, we challenged her study. We wanted to see what would happen in Bantam before we made any recommendations.

Every sport has their problems – there’s no ques­tion. Whether it is soccer, football, lacrosse, rugby, or countless other popular sports, they all have in­juries in them. But every sport has an obligation to review what’s going on. In the absence of data, I say to every one of those sports,
go out and get the data
. Get a data sampling, just as the NFL is now doing in football; they’ve put in place the inten­tional head contact rule, which never used to be in NFL.

Dr. Emery came back to us two years ago, and she reviewed the studies with us during our board meetings. More than fifty scientists worked on the study, and it is an incredible piece of work.

I asked every question I could think of. And I couldn’t find one single data point pointing towards the fact that we should allow Peewee children to go onto the ice and body check one another. I couldn’t find one.

To knowingly put eleven- and twelve-year-old boys on the ice, knowing that there’s a 33% greater chance for injury in our hockey environ­ment than Quebec’s hockey environment, and that they are going to experience 33% more major injuries, is moronic.

How can we change the rules of hockey so quick­ly? I’ll tell you how it can work.

1. Simply ban body checking in Peewee, making it a foul, just as it is in Atom, the age category below Peewee. We would save an approximate annual number of 500 serious injuries in Calgary alone.
   
2. Give kids leaving Peewee and entering Bantam level hockey better instructions. Always give kids two practices to every game. And dedicate at least a third of every practice to teaching Peewee players in a safe environment how to body check, help­ing them to build up their skills and knowledge of body checking as the year progresses.
   
3. Teach them about the dangers of open-ice body checking. Unfortunately, the NHL and sports broadcasts have glamorized big open-ice hits that leave someone motion­less on the ice. I don’t think anyone gets a thrill out of seeing children motionless on the ice as a result of such an aggressive hit.
   
4. Become informed. Do the research. There are hundreds of readily available books and articles on this topic. There are also many experts, scientists, and doctors that are prepared to come and talk to you about this. It’s a matter of getting educated. Unfortunately, if you don’t do step 4, in terms of education and getting informed, then you’re going to run into another problem. The numbers of kids in minor hockey will continue to diminish. Talk to your hockey branch, and Hockey Canada. They have tremendous resources available, and are readily available to help.
   

Although the ban on Peewee body checking was voted down in our Hockey Calgary organization, I applaud what’s going on in the United States right now. USA Hockey has taken out Peewee body checking across the board, end of discussion (link to the video:
http://bit.ly/usa-body-check
). I hope that will happen in Canada someday soon as well.

For the life of me, I can’t imagine that any child wants to be exposed to more danger because they love body checking so much. I’ve watched too many frightened young children lying on the ice in tears after being hit by a brutal, legal body check.

I can’t think of any environment where parents would allow that to happen without a sense of trepidation. Quite frankly, if such an environment exists, I suspect we should be calling child welfare, not talking to the hockey association.

I challenge everyone, on both sides of the debate, to do research and become informed. As a result of getting informed, let your voice be heard.

Many have spoken up in different ways, but they have been met with resistance, and too many have given up. We cannot give up anymore.

Speak up, let your voice be heard, and get your message out to your hockey associations. There are many ways you can do that, from petitioning to simply attending general annual meetings and board meetings. Get involved as a volunteer, and stand up for a cause that is all about child safety.

Most importantly, if you are a parent, talk to your child, and encourage others to do the same. See if your child feels comfortable in every situation. Do they feel like they have a
Magic Helmet
on when they are on the ice rink, or do they enjoy the sport?