Changing Checking in Youth Ice Hockey and What I Have Learned: A New Clinic?

I learned there are 4 wheels to youth ice hockey. They are USA Hockey (they make the rules), Leagues and Clubs (they adopt the USA Hockey standards), and Referees (they enforce the rules). Well maybe three wheels. I also learned that if you say "change checking..." you get a lot of looks. I know I wrote that in the title but what I  (we parents) have been blogging about is not changing checking but enforcing a new rule for improper checking. As I have said... "hockey is a physical sport but it is not a reckless sport."

The four wheels tend  roll their own way but make youth ice hockey move forward. Since they spin at different rates, the direction changes at times. However, they all care about the players and keep things mostly going in the same direction. The difficulty in getting change to occur, with respect to safety, is getting the wheels to spin together. As parents, we can't really easily do that.

The problem is an inherent barrier that makes change difficult because you have essentially four wheels. USA Hockey has the rules. The League adopts the rules and can add their own rules. The Clubs find Leagues that have USA Hockey rules or amended rules. The Referees enforce the rules. With three or four wheels spinning autonomously, it is difficult to get any one wheel to do something about immediately changing the rules with regard to hits to the head, neck, or back. The rule change we want is for kids to lose the privilege of playing out the game if they hit in the described manner. We want an immediate non-discretionary call. You hit to the head, neck, or back... you don't play anymore that game.

When you bring up this safety change, for example, the main barrier is which wheel is responsible for saying here is the new rule. The answer... all of them but they tend to stick with the status quo. The status quo is what I call the hockey culture, which is also the barrier to quick change. And the barrier raises its head, for instance, when someone says, "the rules are there and Referees need to enforce them" or "that this is part of hockey", etc, etc. I've been over the barriers in other blogs.

Now, we (parents) could create a new League that adds this penalty to the mix. That is a lot of work. We could create a non-checking League. But I think checking is needed. We could develop a Club that has more practices and skills development and less games. I am not really interested in doing that. We like our Club. We could send emails to USA Hockey with our thoughts. I have done that. The question becomes what can we do that most quickly helps our children. That is what we are interested in. We don't want to change the face of youth ice hockey. We want the immediate risks of harm reduced to protect our children.

USA Hockey is going to delay checking to the Bantam level (13-14) come the 2012 season. That is fine but what is really missing is the skills training to teach the players how to check, protect themselves on the ice, and how to respect all players above the victory. The Leagues, Clubs, Coaches, and Players all need more standard repetitive training in this area. But what can we do as parents? What can we do quickly? What can we do while the USA Hockey changes come? And you know what, I am 100% sure our idea of one and done will be adopted. However, I think it will be over the next 5-10 years. That is to long for our children to wait.

We have decided to create an instructional checking, skills, and scrimmage, 10-12 week clinic, that falls between seasons. That is the April, May, June time frame. We are developing a standard of training that brings in best practices for teaching youth players how to check, protect themselves on the ice, and develop player respect. The youth players will practice and scrimmage through the teaching of a very specific skills training course that incorporates the Heads Up Hockey Training, Behavior Safety Skills (like body position), Mental Awareness (play options & tracking players), and Scrimmage (practice in action). It will be an adjunct to the current hockey Clubs and Leagues and hopefully help reduce the risk of injuries to our children by teaching them. After a lot of thought, we (parents) felt that teaching was the best place and way to immediately begin to help our children. Our goal is for rule change but we also want to immediately help the youth players that are actively playing. 

We believe we can't prevent injuries but we can reduce the frequency of injuries. If we can help teach a child when to dump a puck verses skate head down into three players... well we reduced risk of injury to that child. And that is one of our goals.