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An upcoming decision, which may ban bodychecking in many minor hockey rinks around the Lower Mainland, has reignited the debate about hitting in youth hockey

A t what age do we tell kids they're not allowed to hit each other? At what age do we train and encourage those same kids to hit each other? At 11 or 13 years of age, or never, not even as adults? The Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association and its 42 minor hockey leagues are asking these questions and will decide Sunday if they will ban bodychecking from all house leagues for players up to 20 years old. In a separate vote, they will also decide whether to eliminate bodychecking from rep peewee hockey and introduce it instead in rep bantam hockey.

Hitting gives us a fast, entertaining, aggressive and competitive contact sport that many Canadians consider an integral and even traditional part of the game. But we watch horrified when superstar hockey players are sidelined by a concussion, and we hold our breath as science reveals the cerebral deterioration and long-term consequences of a sports career sustained by incidental and direct shots to the head.

For these reasons, Lily Williams took her son out of hockey. The president of Vancouver Minor Hockey said concussions and their unknown, long-term damage were too great a risk. Her son, now 15, was a promising all-star who played peewee and midget rep hockey. He has since turned his focus to baseball.

"We decided as a family he wasn't going to play hockey anymore," she says.

Three years ago as a first-year A1 peewee player, her son Keenan was targeted by an opponent and brutally checked in open ice. Williams remembers a "jarring" hit that sent her son's head snapping back and his mouthguard flying, causing him to bite his tongue.

"My son's tough, he doesn't go down easy. But he did. You could see he was wobbly, you could see he was dizzy and it was hard for him to stay up. He would have kept going but his coaches called him back and he sat." Keenan went to the hospital and was off his skates for two weeks before returning to the ice. Williams acknowledges injuries happen in all sports and are even a hazard of daily life but she was adamant her son, who had been singled out by college scouts, would no longer play hockey.

A big, fast centre, Keenan was being groomed for one of hockey's most demanding physical roles and he was laying a lot of hits on his opponents as well as taking them. "Hockey is very physical and it is competitive, it's very emotional and things happen," says Williams last week.

I ntroducing bodychecking to 11and 12-year-old peewee hockey players, the age when Keenan was concussed, more than triples the risk of concussion and injury according to a study released this summer from the University of Calgary.

The researchers-led by sport epidemiologist, physiotherapist and hockey mom, Carolyn Emery who is a professor at the university's faculties of kinesiology and medicine-compared injury rates between more than 2,000 peewee players on 74 Alberta and 76 Quebec teams. Bodychecking is allowed in peewee in Alberta but was eliminated in Quebec at the pewee level and is introduced to 13and 14-year-old bantam players. In Alberta, peewee players suffered 209 game-time injuries compared to 70 injuries for Quebec peewee players.

Similarly, Alberta players suffered 73 concussions, including 14 severe concussions while Quebec players had 20 concussions, four of which considered severe. When researchers replicated the study in bantam, they found no difference in injury rates between Alberta and Quebec teams although incidents of severe injury and concussion were higher in players brand new to bodychecking. Emery supports a ban on bodychecking in peewee hockey and urges leagues across Canada to delay hitting until bantam. USA Hockey doesn't allow its youngest players to hit and the same restrictions apply in house leagues in Ontario and on Vancouver Island and in the Okanagan.

But peewee coaches with Vancouver's minor hockey associations believe there is a better solution than an outright ban until bantam.

"I don't like it. I think long term it will cause more injuries," says Mischa Polzin. As the director of hockey operations and an A1 peewee coach for Vancouver Minor Hockey, Polzin is responsible for athlete development, which includes mandatory bodychecking clinics for prepubescent players.

He wants to see bodychecking taught progressively.

Instead of eliminating hitting from the game for peewee players, he urges leagues to introduce the most basic bodychecking skills at atom, for example, learning to angle and rub out a player along the boards but not yet being taught to step into that opponent. That training would be advanced and expanded through peewee and then in bantam, although open-ice hitting would not be allowed until bantam, suggested Polzin.

Such a progression allows children to develop skills in line with their physical and cognitive ability and complements the longterm athlete development model common in sport today.

"Kids will learn to skate with their heads up," he says, underscoring the difficulty but significance of such a skill. "Most fundamentally, you need to create the awareness around the rink. You need to walk through and say, 'Here's where most contact is going to occur, usually in the corners because that's the offensive and defensive side of the game.'"

To learn more about bodychecking in hockey, go to page 38.

A December editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, titled "Stop the violence and play hockey," urged an outright stop to all on-ice thuggery, particularly gratuitous fighting in the NHL and asked, "Should we not stop the violence now and get on with the main objective of playing hockey, which is scoring goals?"

Now that the Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association is asking the same question, Bill Veenstra, the president of Vancouver Thunderbird minor hockey, helped write a nine-page report on bodychecking for the association in November to weigh the pros and cons.

He says, "Why do we want our recreational players to bodycheck and take all that extra risk? It's hard to justify that. It's hard to come up with a good reason."

As a mother, Williams has her son's wellbeing to consider. As the president of East Side-based Vancouver Minor Hockey, she must consider the wishes from the families of more than 600 players. Last week, the association sent out a survey to the households of its skaters, seeking input on whether parents wanted bodychecking to remain part of their child's sport. Williams says she will respect the feedback she gets from families and vote accordingly when she meets with administrators from more than 40 hockey leagues representing nearly 20,000 athletes playing from Hope to the Sunshine Coast. However, the feedback she's received so far doesn't support rock 'em sock 'em hockey. "I will vote appropriately for what members are saying, but right now I . do not believe many families will want to support hitting. A lot of parents are coming back saying they want to introduce hitting at a later age," she says.

R inkside at Father David Bauer Arena during practice for the Thunderbirds A2 peewee rep team, the speed and skill of minor hockey players marvels John Valk. He considered the proposed bodychecking ban in peewee and says, "They're doing things we didn't think was possible at this age. They skate faster, hit harder. But their bodies aren't growing faster. If their brain is rocked inside their head, you can't train for that."

Valk, whose son was concussed this year playing basketball at recess, said the NHL will continue to curtail gratuitous violence for entertainment's sake if a team's most valuable commodities pay too big a price by sitting out. Amateur players take notice, he says. "It's all moving in the right direction."

A new penalty this season has curtailed head shots in minor hockey, and sportsmanlike points-awarded to a team each game they rack up fewer than 12 minutes in penalties-has an impact on standings.

"Not all coaches put enough work into teaching kids to keep their heads up," says Edward Epstein, whose 12-year-old son is the biggest kid on his team at five-foot-eight but came to hockey only three years ago and takes specialized instruction from a private skills coach.

"If they're playing competitive hockey, they have to face hitting," he says, making the point that bodychecking is a skill and young players should have as much instruction and experience possible. He echoes Polzin when he reasons bodychecking should be introduced at an early age so young players learn how to protect themselves on the ice when they give and receive a bodycheck. "Training should start at five or six so it's automatic and kids develop vision. As soon as a kid puts his head down, he's a target. He doesn't see it coming. I feel hitting is an important part of the game and if you don't hit, you get hit."

Judith Bird, the team's manager and mother to one of the smallest players on the team who was concussed after he was crosschecked earlier in the season, recognizes a ban on bodychecking won't eliminate the on-ice aggression that can preview a heated illegal play.

"At the end of the day, it's our job as parents to make sure our kids are safe and that means taking them out of harm's way. If that means taking out checking, then that's what it means," she says.

Both Vancouver minor hockey associations require their peewee players take mandatory bodychecking clinics when they begin hitting.

"Across the board, too many kids are missing the skill," says Jimmy Ghuman, who coaches the sons of Epstein, Valk and Bird.

"Instead of banning bodychecking, are [leagues] doing enough to teach the skill properly? They get to peewee, they're told to go hit but how many kids have been taught how to hit? Delaying it a year doesn't solve it at all. I think what's going to solve it is you've got to bring in the proper coaches who can break down the skill," says Ghuman.

"It's as simple as breaking it down, stride for stride in your skating. If they're trained properly, one, they're not doing the dumb things like putting their hands up or hitting a guy from behind or in a vulnerable position, two, they're not putting themselves in a vulnerable position and, three, they can take a hit and give a hit safely."

A cross town early the next morning at Sunset Ice Rink, George Valente watches his son's A1 peewee rep team at practice. Banning bodychecking in peewee rep "would be a huge mistake." He reasons that bantam is too late for rep players to learn the challenging contact skill so important to separating an opponent from the puck to gain an advantage. "The discrepancy in size and speed may be vast but it gets more vast. Introducing it earlier is probably a smarter thing to do," he says.

"If they're not developing awareness of the game, they won't finesse those habits and their ability to change won't be as quick."

Valente's son Grayson as a first-year peewee player, is learning to bodycheck. He said he'll feel cheated if bodychecking is banned once he reaches secondyear peewee. A year after that, he'll be hitting again in bantam.

Jeremy Poirer coaches Grayson Valente. "Hitting is a skill and an attribute," Poirer says, and bodychecking is essential to the game of hockey because it elevates the competitive nature of every game and affords teams an advantage, or in his words, "intimidation and fear."

"Those are a part of the game, as long as it's done the right way. Hitting is not the focal point in our pregame talk to the team, but it's in the game plan. Depending on what type of team you're playing-if they have a weaker defence, you might be planning to make them turn, chip pucks by them and then allow them to the puck first and then hit them."

As a defenceman himself, Poirer knows the effect of this strategy. "There is nothing dirty about it. But it's like, 'Oh man this team has been pounding me every time I go back to get the puck.' Then I get hit. Now I don't want to go back and get the puck as much. Now when I'm going to get the puck, I'm going to get rid of it quicker, make a different decision.

"It doesn't mean I'm scared-'Oh, I'm going to go out there and get a concussion.' It's just like-'Oh, my God, I'm getting worn down. Every time I go on the ice, these guys are hitting me.'"

The emotion, pressure, decisionmaking and physical skill are essential to the sport. "That's all part of hockey. That's what makes it so great," Poirer says. Injury will always be a concern for parents like Valente and he says kids whose skills lag behind will either catch up or be forced out of elite hockey. "Once they get their bell rung, they'll learn," Valente says. "Injury is an inherent risk of playing sports and hockey does have a reputation as a tough sport. But it doesn't have to be about violence."

Go to vancourier.com/sports Monday for results on the Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association's decision to eliminate or keep bodychecking.

mstewart@vancourier.com