Controversy pushes girl off hockey team

[Secti0n31 0]

Do you actually think that females are physically equal to males?

With attitudes like this, the thread is gonna get canned by JR real soon unless someone decides to step in and say SHUT UP!!! Yeah ok, your average female athlete is a step below the average male athlete. Fine, bound to happen. BUT the average female athlete is WAY more talented than your average male couch potato, so it's all in the method of thinking.

Personally I would like every chick out there to strive to be just as good as any guy.

On the flip side of the argument, lets say a guy and a girl are both total dead weight on a very competitive team, they are both equally bad and they both get cut. I'd eat my hat if the girl's parents didn't freak out and bitch because their girl got cut. Maybe she didn't get cut because she's a girl, she got cut because she sucked!

I almost didn't make my HS team (10 years ago) and I busted my ass, made the last spot on the 3rd defensive pair and played all 4 years. If I HAD been cut, or walked away, I'd have deserved to not make the team.

Let's not turn this into an "I am man, hear me roar" bullshit topic because there ARE girls that are just as good, and there are guys that SHOULD be sent down to the girls' league. If all you're gonna do is pull a chauvinist, just shut up and go away. I'm not a chick, I'm not a feminist, and I STILL don't wanna hear it!

[rachael7 1]

Do you actually think that females are physically equal to males?

What I know is that I've seen plenty of women and girls that are incredible hockey players and many of them are superior to at least some of the guys on the mens/boys teams at their age/level. And what I think is that those women/girls ought to be allowed to play on any team where they can make the cut. And what I wonder is why some guys are so afraid of competition.

Yes, some parents scream discrimination the moment their little girl is cut from a team and that is an incorrect reaction in at least some of those cases. But then I seem to remember another thread, not more than a month or two back where we were discussing some stupid parents that sued a team because their male Gretzky-to-be got cut from his team. So I think that's more a matter of stupid parents doing stupid things and simply latching onto whatever excuse is handy and obvious.

[Hradsky 1]

Yeah ok, your average female athlete is a step below the average male athlete.

All I`m trying to say. I just don`t get those people who think otherwise.

There are women who can play/keep up with men, but they are obviously the exception.

What we should do to end this is make ALL teams for both men and women, so everyone is allowed to play wherever they can make the cut. If the NHL is still 100% male, so be it. But then there is never any arguing about if this or that person should be allowed to play, if you're good enough, you play. If you're not good, you play with others at that level.

[greyraven8 9]

Don't even know why there was an article in the star paper. Must have been a slow news day with someone trying to stir up controversy.

It's not like she didn't find a team to play on where she is probably a lot happier.

From what I read some parent said and wrote up something at a meeting. She saw it in her mom's email (why she was in her mom's email or why her mom would leave it open on her computer is beyond me), got upset and wanted to quit.

Her coach didn't ask her to quit or from what I could tell, limited her ice time.

Also, what with her mother being a 'team manager', and parents writing up agendas for a parents meeting. Things have changed a lot since I was a kid (decades ago) and probably not for the better (except allowing girls to play now and girls having there own leagues). Back then you had one level of hockey at peewee level with everyone getting equal ice time, and usually an all-star team that was made up of whatever was consider the best players in the league (chosen by the coaches?). Things didn't get divided up into different levels until at least bantam hockey, and one parents bitching would generally be ignored no matter who he was. Sorry to sound like an old curmudgeon.

Play wherever you are happiest. 99.99+% of you are not going to being playing pro (especially those playing at an 'A' level). If you are lucky, all the petty politics and such won't make you quit hockey in your teens, or at least won't make you dislike the sport enough to quit it for good and you will come back to it. If you are really lucky you will still be playing and enjoying hockey in your 70's like some of the players in my dad's group.

[Buzz_LightBeer 969]

What I know is that I've seen plenty of women and girls that are incredible hockey players and many of them are superior to at least some of the guys on the mens/boys teams at their age/level. And what I think is that those women/girls ought to be allowed to play on any team where they can make the cut. And what I wonder is why some guys are so afraid of competition.

Yes, some parents scream discrimination the moment their little girl is cut from a team and that is an incorrect reaction in at least some of those cases. But then I seem to remember another thread, not more than a month or two back where we were discussing some stupid parents that sued a team because their male Gretzky-to-be got cut from his team. So I think that's more a matter of stupid parents doing stupid things and simply latching onto whatever excuse is handy and obvious.

Youre speaking in terms of exceptions rather than rules. What tune will you be singing when this girl takes a full on hit from a boy who is focused on position and making a play and not the gender of the opponent. You cant teach a 13 year old the proper mechanics of the physical aspect of them game if there's an asterisk of "dont hit the girl."

I completely agree that the parent making this a huge issue is a tool with no shed to hang in, but there comes a point where segregation of sports is the way to go.

[Chadd 916]

Once you hit bantam, the additional physical strength and speed of male players usually weeds out all but the very best female players. Even at the highest levels the physical difference is huge. The womens olympic teams usually don't fare all that well against mid-level midget teams when prepping for tournaments. It's not a negative against womens hockey, just a reality of playing a game where physical attributes are so important.

[Secti0n31 0]

Play wherever you are happiest.

That's perhaps the best point I've read on all 4 pages of this thread. If the young lady was content with the team she was on, she would have stayed. Whether the pressure drove her off, or she just didn't think she belonged. She left voluntarily and that's really the end of the story. Either way she didn't want to be there anymore so she booked.

As for Buzz's comment, there were eh, around 5 or 6 girls(no team had more than 1 girl) on Ohio HS Hockey teams that we played against over the course of 4 years, some I may be counting twice due to my crappy memory, and I'm not counting the girl that tried out for our team. We never hesitated to hit them, and they never hesitated to hit us. You know when you go out there that you could get destroyed by a 6'5 300 pound samoan beast, or a 5'4 little blonde white guy like myself. It's part of the game. Plus, it's not like they had long braided hair coming out of their buckets or neon pink laces(some GUYS even had neon pink laces. don't ask, won't tell). They were hockey players and you treated them as such, and they treated all the people they played against with the same attitude.

On that note, I'm duckin out of this thread, because I've said all that needed to be said. Girls that can play SHOULD play.

[bostonjuniorblackhawks 1]

What I know is that I've seen plenty of women and girls that are incredible hockey players and many of them are superior to at least some of the guys on the mens/boys teams at their age/level. And what I think is that those women/girls ought to be allowed to play on any team where they can make the cut. And what I wonder is why some guys are so afraid of competition.

Yes, some parents scream discrimination the moment their little girl is cut from a team and that is an incorrect reaction in at least some of those cases. But then I seem to remember another thread, not more than a month or two back where we were discussing some stupid parents that sued a team because their male Gretzky-to-be got cut from his team. So I think that's more a matter of stupid parents doing stupid things and simply latching onto whatever excuse is handy and obvious.

What's your opinion on guys playing on a girls team? Just curious.

I'm not really sure where I stand haha. I don't see it as a big deal for a girl to play on a boy's team(my friends did), but I think it wouldn't be a good idea for a guy to play with girls.

[rachael7 1]

What's your opinion on guys playing on a girls team? Just curious.

I'm not really sure where I stand haha. I don't see it as a big deal for a girl to play on a boy's team(my friends did), but I think it wouldn't be a good idea for a guy to play with girls.

If there are no guys teams available, then maybe. But if you follow the assumptions here, that girls teams are lower level than boys teams, then wouldn't the girls teams just become dumping grounds for all the boys that get cut from boys teams? There really is no symmetry here - its not a matter of discrimination or not, just not equivalent situations. Find a town where the boys team isn't that good and the only way a guy can get a challenge is playing with the girls, then yeah. But short of that, it is a false equivalency.

[Jarick 5]

My opinion: once they hit puberty, it'd be best to split up girls from boys. Ideally, you'd pool enough kids together to make separate leagues for boys and girls. If one girl in particular is great, she could move up a level or an age group. If it's an area where there's very few hockey teams, I can see a co-ed team.

I like the point about not taking spots from a kid who deserved to be on the team. This assumes there are female teams for the girl(s) to play on that would be a good fit. So if there's a girls league and a boys league, let the girls play with girls and boys with boys. Let the fantastic girl move up a level or age group.

I would rather the kids focus on hockey and being a good teammate than have to deal with politics, both from having to worry about playing with/against girls or about having some kid's dad lobbying for or against ice time or roster decisions. When you make the decision to have girls on the team (or not), and once the coach puts the roster together, end of discussion, it's his team and his rules.

And the whole thing is a non-story water cooler topic anyway.

[iceNsteel 0]

I guess since hardly any dark-skinned people play hockey, that means they must be naturally inferior too, right?

Wow, this is critical thinking at it's finest..... The differences between male and female physiology are simply well known by anyone with some education in biology. I'm just sorry whatever education institutional you attended failed you so badly. As for why there aren't too many black guys in hockey, it's simply cultural. However, there are black men playing in the elite hockey leagues, the same is not true of women.

[rachael7 1]

Wow, this is critical thinking at it's finest..... The differences between male and female physiology are simply well known by anyone with some education in biology. I'm just sorry whatever education institutional you attended failed you so badly. As for why there aren't too many black guys in hockey, it's simply cultural. However, there are black men playing in the elite hockey leagues, the same is not true of women.

It was an exercise in demonstrating the stupidity of the statement to which it responded. Call me when your critical thinking class gets up to the chapter on irony.

[bostonjuniorblackhawks 1]

If there are no guys teams available, then maybe. But if you follow the assumptions here, that girls teams are lower level than boys teams, then wouldn't the girls teams just become dumping grounds for all the boys that get cut from boys teams? There really is no symmetry here - its not a matter of discrimination or not, just not equivalent situations. Find a town where the boys team isn't that good and the only way a guy can get a challenge is playing with the girls, then yeah. But short of that, it is a false equivalency.

Great point. So basically your stance is that girls who can handle playing with boys should be able too play where they choose, but in most instances, boys shouldn't be allowed to play on a girls team? The equivalency of a talented female player playing with guys would be a not so skilled guy playing with girls? I think it's fair to assume that for the most part girls teams are lower level than boys teams. In my area it's true. An exception would be like some of the top prep schools or the top aaa teams in the area.

Creates a double standard but I think it needs to be handled that way.

[rachael7 1]

I don't think it's a double-standard at all actually, because it isn't true symmetry. If we accept the premise that the boys teams are better (and we'll just leave that assumption for the moment, so we can move on with the discussion), then a girl playing on the boys team to move up is not the same as a boy playing on the girls team to move down. The reason being that moving up and moving down are not symmetric motions in this case, despite the intuitive sense that they would be. If you think about it, there are only a small number of people in the 'lower' situation with the skill to move up, but there are a comparatively larger number of people that can't cut it at the more 'elite' level that would be happy to move down. So while only a few girls would ever play on the boys team, a bazillion boys that can't make JV would happily play on the girls team in order to have a league to play in. So before you know it, you'd just have two different co-ed levels, both dominated by all boys, with the girls still fighting for a place to play. Maybe in an ideal world, where there was enough ice and enough teams for everyone, we'd just divide them up by skill level instead of gender and let them all play on whatever team suits their skill. But we don't have that world, so we have to deal with what we have. And the small number of girls wanting to play on the guys team is a trivial matter compared to the massive disruption that would be caused by every guy who couldn't make the cut wanting to play on the girls team.

[bostonjuniorblackhawks 1]

I don't think it's a double-standard at all actually, because it isn't true symmetry. If we accept the premise that the boys teams are better (and we'll just leave that assumption for the moment, so we can move on with the discussion), then a girl playing on the boys team to move up is not the same as a boy playing on the girls team to move down. The reason being that moving up and moving down are not symmetric motions in this case, despite the intuitive sense that they would be. If you think about it, there are only a small number of people in the 'lower' situation with the skill to move up, but there are a comparatively larger number of people that can't cut it at the more 'elite' level that would be happy to move down. So while only a few girls would ever play on the boys team, a bazillion boys that can't make JV would happily play on the girls team in order to have a league to play in. So before you know it, you'd just have two different co-ed levels, both dominated by all boys, with the girls still fighting for a place to play. Maybe in an ideal world, where there was enough ice and enough teams for everyone, we'd just divide them up by skill level instead of gender and let them all play on whatever team suits their skill. But we don't have that world, so we have to deal with what we have. And the small number of girls wanting to play on the guys team is a trivial matter compared to the massive disruption that would be caused by every guy who couldn't make the cut wanting to play on the girls team.

I guess it just depends on how you look at it. If you consider the skill levels of the players and the specific situation in question then I guess it's not really a double standard, but I can see how it seems like a double standard at first glance.

What's your opinion on this assumption. I'm curious

[Axxion89 32]

For the most part, Girls being allowed on Boys teams but not the other way is a double standard. Rejecting that fact basically infers that women, in this case those who play hockey for the most part, are unable to compete with men except for a small proportion who can hang with the boys so to speak. In a perfect world of Unicorns and World Peace, having girls play with guys and equality and sports would be possible and all would be good. However, we live in a world where all is not well and people sue for anything and everything and the easiest way to just keep order is to simply separate girls teams from boys teams. That way, girls don't have to worry about guys making fun of them on the ice, or feeling awkward, or feeling singled out and guys don't have to worry about hitting girls, or feeling awkward either. The only exception to this though is f there are no womens team and in which case, they deserve the right to play on the team should they make it and be accommodated because everyone is entitled to play a sport thats available.

[chippa13 1844]

Wow, this is critical thinking at it's finest..... The differences between male and female physiology are simply well known by anyone with some education in biology. I'm just sorry whatever education institutional you attended failed you so badly. As for why there aren't too many black guys in hockey, it's simply cultural. However, there are black men playing in the elite hockey leagues, the same is not true of women.

Looks like someone has never heard of Manon Rheaume.

[rachael7 1]

I guess it just depends on how you look at it. If you consider the skill levels of the players and the specific situation in question then I guess it's not really a double standard, but I can see how it seems like a double standard at first glance.

What's your opinion on this assumption. I'm curious

It's not a matter of opinion really - its one of those things where there are objective facts involved. Clearly, on the average, men are stronger than women - yes, testosterone counts for something. Enjoy it. But beyond the simple average, the reality is that there is a spectrum of strengths and abilities in both genders and those spectra overlap a LOT. How much... I don't have the data to give that number accurately. But is is certainly safe to say that the top women in most sports are better than the great majority of men in that sport. Taking hockey specifically, even if the Olympic women have trouble against Junior AAA men, as was suggested further up the thread, that still makes those women better than about 80-90% of people that play hockey, right? So there is obviously a big overlap in the abilities of men and women. And given that fact, it seems inevitable that there are many times and places where the genders are going to play together and do so competitively.

[Chadd 916]

It's not a matter of opinion really - its one of those things where there are objective facts involved. Clearly, on the average, men are stronger than women - yes, testosterone counts for something. Enjoy it. But beyond the simple average, the reality is that there is a spectrum of strengths and abilities in both genders and those spectra overlap a LOT. How much... I don't have the data to give that number accurately. But is is certainly safe to say that the top women in most sports are better than the great majority of men in that sport. Taking hockey specifically, even if the Olympic women have trouble against Junior AAA men, as was suggested further up the thread, that still makes those women better than about 80-90% of people that play hockey, right? So there is obviously a big overlap in the abilities of men and women. And given that fact, it seems inevitable that there are many times and places where the genders are going to play together and do so competitively.

I have played against two women that played D1 hockey, both had excellent hands and skated well but were at a distinct disadvantage any time strength came into play. That was in a mid-low level beer league against guys that would never make any type of competitive team. Their ability to stickhandle, pass and shooting accuracy were all well above that of the men they played against, but neither was able to excel and really didn't stand out. In the same league we've had guys that were standouts in all facets of the game but couldn't make a D3 team.

[Hradsky 1]

Ok I think I know what rachael is saying now, and I can agree that there are plenty of levels that males and females can be good competition for each other, but in my opinion it's right around that level of A and AA where there is just too much of a difference. I played with a few girls who play in the second highest level of girls hockey around here, and they weren't bad, they knew what they were doing...but they weren't even close to some of the A/AA players that were there. Would they make good house league (I don't mean to say house league necessarily, but here in Canada it's actually half-decent level of play, especially with all the rep players dropping down since they are 16 and not going anywhere) players? Yes, but they wouldn't be able to compete at a level much higher than that.

But sure, if a girl can keep up with a better boys team then she should play, it is sort of a double standard because I would actually be surprised if a boy would be allowed to play on a girls team...but oh well.

[rachael7 1]

Ok I think I know what rachael is saying now, and I can agree that there are plenty of levels that males and females can be good competition for each other, but in my opinion it's right around that level of A and AA where there is just too much of a difference. I played with a few girls who play in the second highest level of girls hockey around here, and they weren't bad, they knew what they were doing...but they weren't even close to some of the A/AA players that were there. Would they make good house league (I don't mean to say house league necessarily, but here in Canada it's actually half-decent level of play, especially with all the rep players dropping down since they are 16 and not going anywhere) players? Yes, but they wouldn't be able to compete at a level much higher than that.

But sure, if a girl can keep up with a better boys team then she should play, it is sort of a double standard because I would actually be surprised if a boy would be allowed to play on a girls team...but oh well.

That's all I'm trying to say really. That and I don't think it is really a double-standard. And let me explain why...

Its not always just about challenging the one girl who wants to play with the boys - obviously that is part of it, but there is another facet going on that hasn't even been mentioned... all the other girls on the girls team where the boys-team-girl would otherwise be playing. Think about this scenario which many (most?) of us have faced at one point or another... you're playing C rec league or whatever and there's this one sandbagging douche that is easily an A/B player - we've got a whole thread about ringers, so it obviously happens. Its not fair to all the C league guys to have him dominate the game and many leagues would actually force him to move up if there was a higher level available. Well, in the case of a lot of girls leagues, there is no higher level available because of the smaller number of girls playing, and the only way to move that one player that's too good is to move her to a boys team. I'm just saying there's a lot more to it than simply one player's self-interested desire to play on a certain team and that the double-standard arguments mostly fall apart if you look at them with any real scrutiny.

In any case, we've gotten way off topic on a largely esoteric argument. Its been handled pretty well for the most part, I'm relieved to say, as are the vast majority of real life situations where this arises, and that is a good thing. Civil discussions are always good, even on tough topics. So with that, I'm going to step away from the water cooler now, and if you boys want to continue this mental exercise, you go right ahead

[MyBoxersSayJoe 133]

Looks like someone has never heard of Manon Rheaume.

I was waiting for her to be mentioned. I looked her up the other night to see what she's up to these days.

[chk hrd 164]

But is is certainly safe to say that the top women in most sports are better than the great majority of men in that sport. Taking hockey specifically, even if the Olympic women have trouble against Junior AAA men, as was suggested further up the thread, that still makes those women better than about 80-90% of people that play hockey, right? So there is obviously a big overlap in the abilities of men and women.

you are not comparing apples to apples. You are taking the top, elite women and comparing them to the 80-90% of men that would be the average player, not the elite player. At similar levels elite player vs elite or College vs College, etc women cannot compete with the men because of the size, strength and speed. I've played against women who are former D1 players. I agree with Chadd; great hands and can skate but physically cannot match up. The exception I would say is a female goalie I've played against.

It is a double standard.

[Jarick 5]

If I were to put Rachael's argument in a nutshell (I think), it would be that there are far more opportunities for boys to move up or down in level to find one that suits them, but there occasionally would be a girl who cannot find a high enough level of competition unless she moves to the boys. In that case, I'd be fine with her playing with the boys team, provided she can cut it skill- and strength-wise. But if it's a situation where she's going to clearly be the worst player on the boys team, maybe she needs to drop down a level or move back to the girls team. And that's what I thought was the implication of the original story.

[chippa13 1844]

The implication of the original story is that one parent decided to be a complete douche. If the player in question had been a boy then I doubt there would have been a single post in this thread trying to rationalize that guy's actions.