It's Time: End Checking at PeeWee

This morning's Chicago Tribune has a front page story on concussions in prep sports.  You might put the increased awareness that concussions are receiving this year down as some kind of mass over-reaction.  I don't.  I work for a company that builds residences for young men and women who have sustained a traumatic brain injury and cannot live on their own.  It is, unfortunately, a growth business.  

Even if the rate of concussions has stayed the same, the explosive growth in youth sports will continue to produce sickening increases in the number of young adults with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).  In addition to common sense restrictions on playing after a concussion, as has been instituted by USA Hockey this year, I believe each sport must go further.

In youth hockey, that means the elimination of checking at the PeeWee level.

Why is this necessary? 

Allow me a snippet from the Trib article:

One step Talavage suggests is cutting down the number of full-contact practices that high school teams hold. That sentiment is echoed by the Sports Legacy Institute in Boston, which focuses on brain trauma in athletes.

"We have pitch counts for youth baseball because we understand that a kid throwing a ball 100 times a day for years could wear out his elbow without a single injury," said Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the institute and co-director of Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. "It's not crazy to think the brain can operate the same way."

Yes, I believe the head has a "pitch count" when it comes to the number of blows that can be sustained before a person is at serious risk for CTE.  It may take decades for scientists at Boston University and others to prove it definitively, but I have seen enough of the aftermath to know we can't wait to take a basic preventative measure.

Eliminating checking at the PeeWee level with do a couple of things for youth hockey:

• Fewer boys will leave the game at this age.  The funnel in hockey steepens at PeeWee in part due to the introduction of checking. 
  
• Those boys that do leave at Bantam when checking is introduced will have sustained fewer injuries generally and blows to the head specifically, thus improving their long-term health.

As we discussed in a previous post, Bryan Marchment played youth hockey in a league that does not introduce checking until Bantams and he went on to become one of the most prolific body checkers in the NHL.  Checking is a skill, one that can be taught at Bantams, and in so doing will not harm the development of a hockey player.  

Let's make this change for all PeeWees in Illinois hockey.