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Showing content with the highest reputation on 7/19/2019 in all areas

  1. Call me a cynic, but here is how I see it happening. They will take it out of the lower levels, then a few years later some spoiled Little Johnny is going to come along and get cut from a team and Loud Mouth Hockey Mom is going to pitch a fit that it is unfair because her kid is being unfairly discriminated against and is going to cause such a stink that they are going to do away with it for everyone. Sorry to be such a downer, it's just that parents ruin everything eventually.
    1 point
  2. So is this all part of a larger question about whether kids should be allowed to play contact sports at all? I mean, hockey seems on the surface to be less damaging to the body than, for instance, football. What about the issues with repeated blows to the head from heading the ball in soccer? Where is the proper balance between the physical play that is such a big part of the sport we all love and protection against injuries? For my part, checking is a substantial part of the game and it is worth the risk of injuries to those who choose to play it. However, I also believe that there are a great many coaches - probably the vast majority, actually - who spend little time on teaching fundamentally correct checking. There are also plenty (though, I think, fewer) who passively encourage needlessly violent and/or dirty hits by not responding to their players when they see those hits. There are organizations in every city famous for not teaching checking properly. I think checking is important, but I also think we as coaches and parents need to do a far better job of teaching the hows (and, crucially, WHYs) of checking, and enforcing good sportsmanship and respect for the opposing players. The inevitable end result is going to be phasing out checking for all but the elite players. This writing is on the wall. We all play in beer leagues, where body checking is illegal, and we all know that hockey is still an awesome game in non-checking environments, but I still think that eliminating body checking for most youth players will be a sad outcome. (Again, my inner biases at work.)
    1 point
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