By Arielle Zerr
Despite a recent ban on body contact in peewee hockey, the Saskatchewan Hockey Association has ramped up training sessions for coaches of all levels to teach players how to bodycheck.
Hockey Canada’s board of directors voted to eliminate bodychecking in peewee at its annual general meeting last May. The Saskatchewan Hockey Association (SHA) was the only holdout.
“Checking is a skill that needs to be learned along with skating, shooting and puck control,” said Scott Frizzell, manager of hockey operations with the SHA.
The SHA’s program to help coaches teach players how to bodycheck has been around for more than 10 years. It requires at least one coach per team have that training and Hockey Canada recently jumped on board with that requirement as well. Frizzell was part of a Hockey Canada working group focused on checking. The group set a mandate that every head coach, across the country, at every level, must be trained to teach checking by the start of 2014-15 season.
To learn how to teach bodychecking coaches start in the classroom, where they are given hand outs and written guides, listen to presentations and watch videos showing the difference between legal and illegal checks.
It’s the same videos used to teach referees the difference between a penalty and a safe hit, Frizzell explained. By using the same videos the difference between the checks and how they will be enforced in games is clear to the coaches.
Then they take to the rink for an hour-and-a-half of on-ice work, including practice drills. The coaches try these drills themselves before taking it back to teach their players to begin preparing them for Bantam, where checking in games is allowed, he said.
“Checking needs to be taught all the way through (hockey),” says Frizzell adding that although it’s no longer allowed in peewee or atom it will be a skill they will need as they advance in the game.
When a coach teaches a player to check they also learn how to identify an incoming check and how to properly absorb it, he said.
Adam Kreutzer has been playing hockey for more than 16 years, well before the checking bans in peewee and atom were implemented. He says that he is no worse off because he began checking at a young age.
“It’s always going to be a part of hockey, you will never get rid of it in Canada and the States. It’s what we’re known for. We’re known for hitting,” he says.
But it’s the potential consequences that come from not knowing how to hit or take a hit that Frizzell and the SHA hope to limit through training.
“Concussions have been in the news and we want to be able to protect our children, so we need to be able to teach the coaches. And if we teach them well enough, and we respect the methods, it will protect our kids better,” he said.
