Point and Counterpoint: Checking

Two recent newspaper articles show how the checking rule change, and concussions in youth sports generally, continues to be a hot topic.

Point

An article in the New Yorker posed the question:

Does Football Have A Future?

This excellent piece is on the legal liability for the NFL stemming from the growing concussion phenomenon.  It briefly touched on hockey as well:

“Hockey, by the way, has a higher incidence of concussions than football,” Dr. Maroon told me. This is true of women’s college hockey, at least, which doesn’t even allow body-checking. (Women, in general, seem substantially more prone to concussions, and explanations vary, from weaker necks to a greater honesty in self-diagnosis.) And in December, 2009, Reggie Fleming, a New York Rangers defenseman in the nineteen-sixties who was known more for his fighting than for his scoring, became the first pro hockey player to be given a diagnosis of C.T.E. Hockey may now have a concussion crisis on its hands, with the N.H.L.’s best and most marketable player, Sidney Crosby, having been blindsided during the sport’s annual Winter Classic; attempting to play again, four days later, he was drilled into the boards, and he hasn’t played since.

The fact that hockey has a higher incidence of concussions leads me to wonder - does hockey have a future?  Relevant to the checking rule change:

Some of the most effective proposed reforms seem to involve limiting contact during practice, and forbidding children to tackle until adolescence or beyond. (Developing brains are vulnerable to “second-impact” syndrome.) “Seventy-five per cent of the hits are in practice,” Nowinski said. “You could drop the exposure by fifty per cent without changing the game at all.” 

Emphasis added.  If your children participate in youth sports, I encourage you to read this article in its entirety.


Counterpoint

Toronto's The Globe and Mail interviewed a concussion expert that disagrees with the checking rule change that is "a done deal" by all accounts:

Researcher-raising-the-age-for-body-checking-a-mistake

Barry Willer, of the University of Buffalo, sums up the argument many have against the rule change:

 “Personally, I think that would be a mistake,” Willer said. “All you’re doing is putting it [bodychecking] off and putting it off to an age where the players are bigger and stronger and have more testosterone. The injury rates will not only be higher, but I think more serious.”

Willer conducted his own study on bodychecking and found:

The study, published last month, noted a “spike” in injuries among players in the first year that bodychecking was introduced. The report added that the majority of those injuries (66 per cent) were the result of “unintentional collisions” and not a result of a deliberate attempt to bodycheck.

Willer explained that “unintentional collisions” included players accidentally running into one another or injuring themselves when they fell to the ice, into the boards or goalposts.

My Take

Unfortunately Willer does not discuss the fact that the rule change will introduce body contact at the Mite division and that PeeWees will be taught bodychecking in practice before being allowed to start checking in games at Bantam.  This change may in fact result in players being better prepared for the "unintentional collisions" as well.  Further, Willer ignores the particular vulnerability that PeeWee age players have to concussions at that stage of their physical development.