THE EFFECT OF A BODY CHECKING RULE CHANGE ON HEAD IMPACT BIOMECHANICS IN BANTAM ICE HOCKEY ATHLETES
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Body checking is the most common injury mechanism in ice hockey. Rule changes have sought to mitigate body checking exposure among youth players. In 2011, USA Hockey changed the legal body checking age from Pee Wee (11/12-year-olds) to Bantam (13/14-year-olds). Interestingly, Bantam players with checking experience during Pee Wee had a lower concussion risk relative to Bantam players without checking experience in a sample of Canadian youth hockey players. Understanding the head impact biomechanics underlying these findings could further elucidate the consequences of this rule change. Purpose: To determine the association between Pee Wee checking exposure and head impact biomechanics in a cohort of Bantam players. Methods: We prospectively collected data on Bantam ice hockey players during the 2006/07-2009/10 seasons and the 2012-2013 season. The 2006/07-2009/10 cohort (n= 61, age=13.9±0.5 years, height=168.2±8.7 cm, mass=59.9±10.4 kg) was allowed to body check (BC) as a Pee Wee player. The 2012-2013 cohort (n=15, age=13.3±0.4 years, height=167.5±7.4 cm, mass=57.5±8.6 kg) was not permitted to body check (NBC) as a Pee Wee player. Over the course of each season, head impacts were measured using in-helmet accelerometers. Only head impacts with linear acceleration ≥10 g were included in our analysis. Main outcome measures were mean linear acceleration (g) and rotational acceleration (rad/s 2 ). Levene’s tests assessed equality of variance between groups. We employed mixed effects models to assess group differences in mean linear and rotational acceleration between BC and NBC groups. Results: The BC and NBC groups did not differ in height (t 74 =0.28, p=0.78) or mass (t 74 =0.84, p=0.40). When assessing group differences in head impact biomechanics, the NBC experienced significantly greater linear acceleration (F 1,74 =4.36, p=0.04) and greater rotational acceleration (F 1,74 =21.2, p<0.001) relative to the BC group. On average, the NBC group experienced 23.1 ± 0.87 g linear acceleration and 1993.5 ± 68.4 rad/s 2 rotational acceleration compared to the BC group, which experienced 21.2 ± 0.30 g linear acceleration and 1615.9 ± 45.2 rad/s 2 rotational acceleration. Conclusions: Bantam ice hockey players without body checking experience during their Pee Wee years experienced greater average linear and rotational acceleration relative to players with Pee Wee body checking experience. While removing body checking from Pee Wee ice hockey may reduce short-term injury risk, these athletes may demonstrate more high-risk head impact biomechanics when legally allowed to body check. Future research should continue to examine the influence of policy changes on head impact biomechanics and injury risk in youth ice hockey. [Figure: see text]
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".