Okay To Hit A Girl?

Hockey, once traditionally dominated by males, is supporting female participation in school programs and community organizations. Higher competitive levels, such as International Competitions may include contact, despite opposition from anti-hitting hockey parents, sports physicians and game enthusiasts. Will hockey become a full-body contact sport for girls?

For now, checking is prohibited in girls’ hockey.

With development, skill and speed will increase, and so will injuries. Girls display less aggressive attitudes than their male counterparts and have shown less than half the injury rate. Improving skill levels and knowledge of the game is their immediate goal.

Females have invaded the male sanctioned territory of wrestling and football to demonstrate their upper body agility and competitiveness. Coed competition often means playing against upper-body superiority outweighing and out-muscling girls by 50 pounds or more. Many believe for this reason, coed play should stop at age 12 or 13, whenever puberty kicks in.

Minnesota is the only state that sanctions girls' ice hockey as a high school sport. The number of participants has increased nationwide and attracted a greater need for equipment and ice time. The Female Athlete, a catalog and Web site rates ice hockey among the company's fastest growing lines.

Females have come along way to walk in the footsteps of male dominated sports. But, are females built to endure crushing body hits to chest and abdominal areas? There is a huge difference between what a female basketball or baseball player endures physically from a full contact hockey player.

Do we want to see hit-girls on the ice, girls who back up talk with their fists, girls who are ranked for tuff-girl ethics, pummeling, stick work and cheap-shots? When girls attitudes were surveyed in regard to tolerating physical pain, to win at any cost to themselves or their opponent, their responses were dissimilar from the more aggressive and competitive male attitudes.

For now, the girls’ game focuses on all aspects of playmaking with a no-checking game format. There are fewer serious injuries and their attitudes reflect good sportsmanship and less hostility.

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