Hockey: Toughest Sport?



    The first sport I ever played was hockey. At 3 years old my parents decided I had to much energy so they just threw me into whichever sport still had registration open at the time. I ended up playing for 4 years and ended up quitting because playing hockey 6 days a week at 2 clubs at 7 years old was a little bit too much. That sounds like a lot, but for hockey that seemed to be the norm. Dads who want their kid to be the next big NHL star basically raise their kids in hockey which creates one of the toughest environments out of any sport. Even sports like football, which I played after, didn't feel as intense as hockey always did. 

    Now that I've found the sport I love and am dedicated to it, not just looking back, but also looking at current hockey, I can see how different from other contact sports it is. The biggest example of this is fighting. In hockey if two players start fighting, the referees just stand there and wait for the guy who's last standing. Of course there is a penalty, but bare-fist fighting has become normalized in hockey whereas any other sport as zero tolerance for such behavior. Furthermore, moves that aren't considered penalty's are hits similar to those seen in football except these men are flying on skates, going much faster. 

    In today's day, it's surprising that a sport like hockey hasn't changed to protect its players more. We see many sports making this shift, such as football and basketball, because of the injury concern. On the other hand, hockey is continuing to keep the game how it always was for the most part which I think more sports should do as well.

     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growth of Boys' Volleyball

Image
  When thinking about the most popular sports, one will often name sports such as football, soccer, basketball, and hockey. These of course are the most played sports at least in America, but which sport has the most growth among youth athletes? Volleyball, especially for men, hasn't been that popular until maybe around a decade ago. Until I was in middle school I hadn’t even heard of any boys that played volleyball and the team wasn’t that big either. Now though, around 7 years later, there are exponentially more boys’ volleyball clubs in the Midwest and each club has way more teams than it used to.  So what allowed volleyball to grow among boys, especially in the midwest where there’s no beach to play sand? The biggest thing that will influence a kid to start a sport is their parents and their friends. If your parents don’t put you in volleyball, and your friends don’t play volleyball, how would you know to try it out? Many players come from a second sport, like basketball...
Read more

Mental Illness in Media

Image
          I recently watched an old movie which was a comedy that also interestingly addressed mental health disorders.  In Frank Oz’s 1991 comedy “What About Bob?” Bill Murray plays the character Bob Wiley who is an individual who suffers from what he defines as “problems.” These problems are initially described as many phobias and anxieties. In the beginning of the film, Bob struggles to find a psychiatrist who can help him or even tolerate him. Eventually, he comes across Dr. Leo Marvin and Bob fully believes he’s the Doctor who can finally help him. However, this is where the film takes a twist and reveals Bob’s one of the more impactful disorders Bob has. After meeting with Dr. Marvin, Bob develops codependency towards him and for the rest of the film, we follow Bob as he constantly tries to fulfill his desire to be needed by Dr. Marvin.     Understandably, some may view this film as making fun of the disorder or trying to make entertain...
Read more

Challenges & Experiences at NC

Image
     So far college hasn’t been too challenging or anything when it comes to school and sports. The first week was fun getting to know my teammates and everyone else on campus, especially when classes hadn’t started yet. Also, the workload for most of my classes is lower than I expected, especially for Math and Psych. No tests are super challenging that I have to study super long for so the only challenging part has been just making sure I know what homework I have. It can sometimes be hard to keep up with, especially in classes where the homework isn’t on the syllabus. Other than that though, my experience at North Central has been pretty positive so far.
Read more