Concerned about your child's safety in minor hockey? This survey's for you

A group of P.E.I. hockey parents has created a survey to determine whether their concerns about head injuries and verbal abuse are widespread.

Greg McKenna is among the parents who make up Hockey Safety PEI.

McKenna knows other parents who share his concernsbut that isn't enough of a sample size, he said.

'Concerns about their child's safety'

"I've spent lots of time in the stands over the years, hearing other parents make comments about the amount of unnecessary contact taking place in the sport," McKenna said.

"Their concerns about their child's safety just led me to believe we needed to collect some information on that."

But McKenna ismaking no assumptions about whether the majority of parents share his views.

"If it turns out there's no concerns, then that's that I can say, 'fair enough, I'm an overprotective parent' and move on," he said.

"If there's a lot of people who have similar concerns and they think it would be appropriate to move forward to organizations like Hockey PEI, [we would] indicate to them that this isn't just a small issue ... and hopefully that would motivate some change from these governing organizations."

'Inconsistent enforcement'

The survey has 15 questions, eight of which are about parents' perception of hockey safety. It asks if their children have previous head injuries and if they worry about their kids' safety during a game, among other things.

For McKenna, the biggest issue is enforcing the rules, as well as sportsmanship.

"There's no enforcement of those principles, or very little, or inconsistent enforcement," he said.

"Children can abuse each other verbally and there's no penalty for that. They're standing in front of referees, calling each other names and the referees just skate away from it."

'Enforce the rules in a meaningful way'

McKenna would like to see a penalty handed down forunsportsmanlike conductin those cases.

"I think if you start to enforce the rules in a meaningful way, that will change the culture of the sport. It doesn't take kids or coaches long to figure out, 'If I do this, I'm in the penalty box.'"

McKenna believes minor hockey organizations could begin to change the sport ifthey wanted to.

"The culture in the sport is well-entrenched and continues to be, because of things like the way NHL hockey is played," he said.

'Hundreds of responses' required

"Ideally, we'd want to see kind of a top-down pressure, with referees and coaches saying, 'This is no longer acceptable. One child's not allowed to tell another child to eff-off on the ice.'"

Getting the word out about the survey is McKenna's challenge.

"I would literally need hundreds of responses from parents to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions from the data."

A link to the survey can be found on the Hockey Safety PEI Facebook page. It takes less than three minutes to complete, McKenna said.

More P.E.I. news