House league hockey players in the Bantam and Midget levels will no longer be able to use a body check to separate the puck from their opponent.
The Fort McMurray Minor Hockey Association has banned body checking at the two levels, although it doesn’t affect the elite streams or rep programs.
“When we made the decision to eliminate checking, we’re basically providing an opportunity for children to play an organized sport without the fear of injury,” said Travis Galenzoski, President. “The game has changed, it’s faster, more skilled, we’re protecting a lot of kids there’s a larger need in minor hockey [for the ban] than there is negative effects.”
In an internal memo to membership the FMMHA says, “Minor hockey is a kid’s sport, one that should be played without having to worry about getting serious injuries such as a brain injury or broken bones. Our primary focus is to teach our youth the core skills of the game, including skating, puck-handling, passing, and teamwork – not to injure them. It’s natural for a degree of body contact to happen when you have a group of people skating on an ice rink. But when players have a ‘hit to hurt’ mentality, we move away from accidental collisions to premeditated contact that often results in injuries – some of which can have long term devastating effects.”
The ban will come into play for the beginning of the 2015-16 season.
Galenzoski says the ultimately this should help keep kids playing the game longer, which falls under Hockey Alberta’s vision statement of “Hockey for Life.”
