The Prince George Minor Hockey Association has reversed a decision to remove body checking from its midget club division.
Body checking was reinstated for the 2011-12 season during a meeting of the PGMHA executive on Monday night.
"After careful consideration and some discussion -- and also getting feedback from our members, which included both parents and kids -- we decided we would bring it back into midget," said Shawn Rice, who is now the association's vice president after one year as president.
The midget club division is one rung below rep and caters to players in the 15- to 17-year-old age range. Last month, the PGMHA announced on its website that body checking would be removed because of "rough play and a multitude of discipline issues" in the 2010-11 season. Rice said hitting from behind incidents, fighting and verbal abuse of officials was all too common.
At the PGMHA annual general meeting last Wednesday, close to 20 people spoke out against removing body checking from midget club.
"We had a couple referees there and they were expressing concerns that midget club, for some of them, is their training ground," Rice said. "Also, with regards to some of the players, there was concern that making a decision like this was basically telling the kids that we were giving up on their development. There are quite a few kids that when they come up into midget, because they're first-year midgets, they play in club. They have the opportunity to play rep after that but if we put them into a year of no checking, then that's going to have a big effect on them making rep the following year. Parents did also point out that a lot of the stuff that's been happening, it's not all related to checking because we are seeing some of it in our non-checking leagues. They also pointed out there are other ways of dealing with it."
The association will now implement some of those "other ways." Rice said new measures are already being considered.
"We're going to be looking at bringing in some further discipline to deal with some of these activities and one of the things that we're also looking at is probably bringing in some discipline even for minor penalties -- for some of these kids that have excessive minor penalties. So maybe after so many penalties, you get a game misconduct. We're going to pilot that in the midget division [including the house division] and see how it works, because it is going to be more work on our part. We'll have to track every minor penalty."
In the midget house division, there was no body checking last season but Rice said there was still an increase in discipline-related problems.
Mike Bryce, who coached in the midget club division last season, was one of the people not in favour of removing body checking from midget club in 2011-12. Bryce said it's "great" that the PGMHA listened to the concerns of its members and reversed course.
"I think it was the right decision in the interest of the majority of the kids that target midget club to play hockey in," Bryce said. "I also would compliment the board of minor hockey and what, from my perspective, appears to be their ability to objectively listen to what the members want. I was at the AGM and there seemed to be a very common view to want to keep body checking in midget club."
n In other PGMHA news, Alec Hartney is the new president. Also, Ken Laursen has been named as the association's coach of the year for 2010-11 and Mark Barlow has been chosen as volunteer of the year. Laursen, who does not have a child in minor hockey, guided a peewee club team sponsored by 101.3 The River. Barlow, meanwhile, coached two teams, filled a major role in player evaluations at the start of the year, was a big part of the female development program and is on the PGMHA board of directors as equipment manager.
