Quote:
Originally Posted by showtime
There still is a level of contact in beer leagues, at the high level ones I've played its more no open ice hits.
If the kid is playing for purely recreation their are options for that kid to play non contact. Like i said an entire stream from Peewee to Junior exists in Calgary for non contact. Lots of kids love playing in contact leagues why make them wait. They wouldn't do that for football. If you don't want your kid to play contact don't let them, why should it affect every other kid.
Ive coached for 6 years high level bantam and had 3 players receive concussion two minor and one fairly bad one. Only one of them involved a hit and it was a minor concussion.
The study was openly mocked meeting with hockey canada reps. I know a researcher who was involved in the study and she even said it had major biases included. It will be sad when next year they claim its a success because injures in bantam stayed the same and peewee went down when in reality the results won't be known for another 4-5 years.
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The problem with the current non contact leagues is the skill level is quite poor and that has to do with the peer pressure dynamics that only wussy kids play in the pansy league. This idea that not having kids hit eachother is the panzification of hockey is the attitude that needs to be changed. Watch parents at hockey games and there are parents who want there kids to hurt other kids.
If your argument is why make kids wait to play contact why isn't there a campaign to lower the age bodychecking is introduced? Why is pee wee the perfect age not higher not lower. I agree that with you that the results from this change need to be monitored for 5 or 6 years to see the real affects of the change. Following the studies is what should be done and right now biased or not that study is the best we have. If someone wants to take the same dataset and re-analyse it at comes to different conclusions I would be all for it and if that data showed that hitting in pee-wee reduced injuries in bantam then re-open the discussion but based on the available data we have right now it supports moving the hitting age up.
I suspect over the next 10 years football will be changing. As more and more concussion research is showing that small non-concussion causing hits have a negative cumulative affect you will see a move to limit these types of hits in youth football. Football also will never be the leader as it is even more driven by male ego culture and the dream of playing pro than hockey is.