USA Hockey Membership Facts or Fallacy?

[Guest]

If we can't guarantee

1) that children are getting enough skating time to have the excellent skating skills needed to give and receive checks safely

2) that all coaches have the skill needed to teach checking safely

3) that all coaches are encouraging safe and ethical checking

4) that all officials are skilled enough to call all the dangerous penalties, especially the big penalties for any head contact

5) that players at all levels are skilled enough at skating and stick handling and hockey sense so that they don't "fall back on" injuring other players as part of their game

6) that teenage boys are capable of controlling their impulses to hurt another child in retaliation then the ethical and moral thing to do to protect and serve the children in an amateur and developmental youth hockey league -- which is all of DVHL -- is to remove the main cause of brain injuries in the game. The consequence for the failure of adults to run a safe checking level cannot be brain injuries in children.


Canadian studies on the topic show players and parents saying checking actually is one of the main reasons kids leave hockey at later ages, and this is in Canada, where hockey is a birthright.

In DVHL, we'd also keep more girls in the game; girls teams are far and few between in some areas, and promoting non-checking 14U hockey would keep in more kids all together. The kids I talk to who have left hockey after pee wee, almost all exclusively say it's because of the hitting and injuries.

I know plenty of kids who leave pee wee to play one more year of non-checking middle school hockey, and then quit the game, waiting it out for men's league.