Below you can find feedback about the body checking motions that were recently voted down at the Hockey Calgary AGM.
Please take this email as a message of shock and disgust that Hockey Calgary has decided to keep body checking at the Pee Wee level despite both overwhelming medical evidence of the negative consequences and the results of the parent survey which supported the removal of body checking from the Pee Wee level.
I could not locate any benefits in the Hockey Calgary reports for having body checking at the Pee Wee level.
Hopefully Hockey Calgary will come to its senses in the near future and remove body checking from the Pee Wee level and introduce it at the Bantam level. It would be embarrassing if Hockey Alberta had step in and force this to happen.
I am disappointed with the decision by Hockey Calgary to allow body checking to continue at the PeeWee level.
The decision violates a basic premise of safety; namely, reducing the risk of injury by reducing exposure to the hazards that cause the injury.
There is a proven correlation between the hazards of body checking in hockey and the associated injuries, which are predominantly concussions.
Hockey Calgary has made a deliberate decision to endanger the health of young athletes by rejecting the motions to ban body checking at the PeeWee level and at the the lower levels of Bantam.
It was extremely irresponsible of Hockey Calgary to base the decision on a popular vote , through questionable participation, rather than demonstrate leadership and make an
informed decision.
Some of salient reasons for banning body checking at the PeeWee level and lower are as follows:
Hockey is only one activity in the lives of children growing up in Calgary. The detrimental impact of concussions carries over to all aspects of the child's life.
It is unconscionable to jeopardize the overall growth and development of these children by unnecessarily exposing them to injury in the sport of hockey.
As we all feared without a province wide ban it was a difficult fight. I'm hearing Hockey Alberta is going to take a year to look at things, really, a year? I guess I shouldn't be surprised they still haven't acted on their 2003 study findings. Many of us have kids going into Peewee and we are very concerned, it went from a full ban on hitting to nothing. Is there any good news out there?
I am glad to have read in our local Vancouver “The Province” newspaper of your association’s recent vote to keep contact/body checking in hockey in the noted levels. Our parent Assoc., PCAHA, recently conducted the same vote and we are now faced with “Non contact/No body checking” in all house “c” levels of hockey from Pee Wee through Midget starting this 2012/13 season. Rep hockey is to remain full contact for all levels from Pee Wee forward.
I believe that our parent assoc., PCAHA, has a different agenda in hand. Injuries are a concern to all, including PCAHA, as they should be, but a knee jerk ban to contact I believe is not the answer.
As many as 54% of our home assoc., LMHA, voted to keep contact in the game so I am fighting for them and am looking for deeper answers.
As a parent of an Atom aged child, I wanted to express my regret that Hockey Calgary has voted to continue body contact at the Pee Wee level and above for non-elite players. My son will finish his last year of Atom for the 2012/2013 season and when he moves to Pee Wee, I will put him in a non-contact league or remove him from hockey altogether.
I want him to continue to play hockey, but he's not going to play in the NHL. Therefore, he will need his brain intact for his future. Why would I risk that for hockey, as much as he and I both love the sport? There's no such thing as safe body checking. It only takes one bad hit to ruin his future.
With all the increased medical research on brain injuries (both adult and children) that comes out practically daily, this decision makes no sense to me. Ultimately, body checking will be removed from non-elite minor hockey, as many leagues across the country have already done so. Why delay it? I don't know who voted in favor of this decision, but they clearly don't have young kids playing hockey or they don't care about their children's welfare or they're too ignorant to understand the implications of brain injuries on children or...I don't know.
I think it is a very bad decision and will be another factor that contributes to the continued decline in participation in minor hockey across the country.
I was very disappointed to read about the vote against banning bodychecking.
As a parent of a 12 year old boy who plays in the bottom division and will be going into Bantam next fall, I am concerned. These kids are not the best skaters and tend to be less steady on their feet. My son has already had a concussion and a broken arm due to checking from much larger boys. Unfortunately he loves hockey and needs the physical exercise.
Very disappointing. I am worried every time he plays a game. As are all the other mothers I talk to on the bench.
Please hear our voices and work to, at least, ban checking in these lower levels.
Unfortunately the vote outcome was emotional, and not fact based.
I understand the next move is to work with Hockey Alberta, to help them go through a similar process.
Happy to see they have formally struck a Body Checking Review Committee. Although noticeably absent is anyone with a medical background.
I continue my grass roots education/awareness initiatives in Edmonton. Including a recent presentation to the Whitemud West Hockey Association's AGM. I referenced the facts that your committee summarized, along with some other related research findings.
I encouraged the Whitemud board to educate themselves about the added risks of body checking in youth hockey, and to start a dialogue about the issue. And I asked them to lobby Hockey Edmonton to get proactively involved, rather than sitting on the side lines waiting for Hockey Alberta to dictate rule changes to them.
The WWHA board appears to have fairly good governance. They allowed my request to be added to the AGM agenda, allowed me to speak freely, and interesting dialogue followed. Including one fellow who was there just as on observer and was interested in the agenda item. Apparently his wife is a pediatric surgeon and has first hand knowledge of how serious concussions/head injuries are for kids. He was quite opinionated in supporting me. He suggested that the Board will be moved to act on the issue in one of two ways. Either controlling the process themselves, or showing leadership to initiate change. Or alternatively not being in control of the process - most likely because of litigation, when some kid gets seriously hurt and his parents sue everyone who had an influence on the unsafe playing environment, including boards like this. The room went pretty cold. Turns out he is a lawyer (although a tax guy, not a litigator).
I also had one of the Whitemud board members subsequently tell me that the "younger guys" at the Board meeting strongly support everything I was saying. They care about creating a safer playing environment for their kids (who are currently in Novice and Atom).
On a sad note this issue is affecting my son's ability to develop his hockey skills. He is a very keen hockey player who moves to Peewee this year. I am taking him out of the Hockey Edmonton body checking hockey stream. Our only alternative is to join Hockey Edmonton's Recreational Hockey League which has 18 games, 2 practices, and no tournaments (not even minor hockey week). Additional practices are not allowed. So there is no skill development. Frustrating.
Hopefully the Hockey Alberta rules will change soon and force Edmonton to change too. Then my son (and I as a coach) can get back into hockey at the level he'd prefer to compete at.
Thanks again for your leadership on this very important and highly divisive issue!