| When
The Globe and Mail was drawing up its year-end list of the 25 most
influential sports figures of 2003, there was perhaps one name that
stood out: Mark Kelley. That’s because he was neither a professional
athlete, nor one who works in sports. Rather he was a journalist
with CBC News: Disclosure. Explained The Globe:
“The CBC reporter broke one of the hot-button stories in Canadian
sport when he reported on Disclosure that the Canadian Hockey Association’s
decision to allow body-checking for nine-year-olds was based on
bad information. The CHA subsequently pushed back the age for body-checking
to 11.”
CBC News: Disclosure first began to investigate the story after
one of our producers, Harvey Cashore, watched an episode of “Coach’s
Corner” on Hockey Night in Canada in the spring of 2002 –
where Don Cherry told his viewers that the Canadian Hockey Association
had dropped a 20-year ban on body checking in hockey for young children.
The decision had the potential to affect tens of thousands of children
playing hockey each year. And since the principal concern about
body checking in hockey had to do with injuries, we began a lengthy
investigation into how and why the ban was lifted in the first place.
Above all, we discovered that the CHA claimed that a brand new university
study proved there would be no increase in injuries if children
as young as nine years old were allowed to body check. The decision
meant that more than 80,000 nine- and 10-year-old children in amateur
hockey would now be allowed to body check -– if their local
associations agreed. And with “science” on their side,
the Greater Toronto Hockey League was one of four associations to
let Atom children in “rep” hockey body check for the
first time in two decades. Other hockey leagues were poised to join
them.
What most Canadians didn’t know is that the decision to drop
the ban had come after years of powerful lobbying on the part of
certain hockey associations, in particular the Greater Toronto Hockey
League and the Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF).
In the 1980s and 1990s dozens of university studies from around
the world had concluded that body-checking leagues produced more
injuries than non-contact leagues. Simply put, more children in
body-checking leagues were ending up with broken bones, concussions
and had more visits to hospital emergency rooms.
The OHF decided it wanted another study conducted, and got in touch
with a Lakehead University professor. Four years later, the Lakehead
University study would be the first of its kind to conclude that
body checking would not produce more injuries if introduced at the
“Atom” age level.
But the conclusion was flawed: CBC News: Disclosure discovered that
the study’s own data proved the opposite: There were, in fact,
nearly four times more injuries in the body checking leagues.
Those findings were only made after an exhaustive, months-long investigation
by CBC News: Disclosure. Three producers were assigned full-time
to the story. We interviewed dozens of sports medicine doctors,
coaches, professors and parents. We spent months following a team
of nine- and 10-year-old’s who were body checking for the
first time. And we analyzed and crunched the numbers in the Lakehead
University Study. We hired a statistician who confirmed our initial
suspicions that the conclusions behind the data were flawed. In
short, this was one of the largest investigative projects of the
season.
Disclosure’s story was headline news overnight. The Globe
and Mail, the Toronto Star, the National Post and every other major
paper in the country reported on our revelations. Other media jumped
in: Radio talk shows invited Mark Kelley into panel discussions,
TSN’s “Off The Record” had him as a guest, and
across the country, in hockey dressing rooms, there was talk of
little else.
CBC News: Disclosure received hundreds of e-mails in the aftermath
of our story. Coaches, parents and health care professionals wrote
in thanking us for our findings, telling us we had performed a valuable
public service.
And, finally, in May of 2003, the Canadian Hockey Association reversed
its decision, publicly admitting that the university study was flawed.
It credited CBC News: Disclosure with having exposed the errors
in the study.
Perhaps the most telling letter came from Paul Dennis, Player Development
Coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, after the CHA reversed its decision
based on our story.
“Your penetrating questions had one thing in mind, and that
was the welfare of young children playing this great game,”
wrote Dennis. “The CHA decision will not only protect children
from unnecessary injuries, it will allow them to learn the important
skills required to play the game…without fear of being hit
from behind.”
The difficulty in understanding this story was obtaining access
to the raw data used in the study. While the university study was
public, much of the information acquired in the study was not. And
so we took the approach that we had to assess this study, as well
as dozens of other similar studies conducted in the last 20 years.
We compiled an enormous chronology of worldwide studies and concluded
the Lakehead University study was the only one of its kind to state
that body checking would not cause injuries at this age level. Eventually
we convinced the Canadian Hockey Association to help us obtain better
data from the University. Armed with our new information, we applied
our own statistical analysis and concluded their study was flawed
– that the raw data proved there were more injuries in the
body-checking league. We took our data to an independent statistician
who not only confirmed our findings, but revealed numerous flaws
in the original study’s methodology.
Our story depended on our ability to convince insiders in the Canadian
Hockey Association, and other hockey associations in Canada, to
talk “for background” about the years-long lobby to
drop the ban on body checking in hockey. One inside source told
us early on that the decision to conduct this particular study was
not just controversial – it prompted every member of the CHA’s
coaching committee to resign in protest. [When we contacted them,
some members of the coaching committee told us they resigned because
they did not want to see young children used as guinea pigs in a
study to see which among them would get hurt.]
As we followed up on that tip, we discovered the inside story of
how a group of people inside the Ontario Hockey Federation had worked
feverishly for years to drop the ban on body checking. And, as it
turned out, the OHF was the organization that was catalyst behind
the flawed university study. We also were able to develop good sources
inside the CHA -- who told us that the public response by the CHA
to our first story was itself based on false information. Because
of these sources, we were able to follow up our first story with
another breaking story that followed only one week later.
Another difficulty in our story was our intensive shooting approach
in the field. Our team of producers had to commit to shooting five
days a week over a four-month period, at every hockey game, practice
and tournament to be able to accurately show the effect body checking
had on our Atom league team. Each producer had a PD150 camera and
had to quickly learn how to be a fly on the wall on and off the
ice. We also had to obtain the permission from the hockey parents
and the hockey league to have full, uninhibited access to their
triumphs and trials in the season. More importantly, gaining the
trust of the kids themselves was essential for our story, they had
to get used to us shooting them so they could become USED TO our
presence everywhere from in the dressing room to in the penalty
box.
Through our fly-on-the wall approach, our cameras became a key investigative
tool. In a way, we set up our own sociology exercise by following
and documenting the impact that body checking had on a team of nine-year
old boys. The moments we captured on film revealed the 'truth' in
a way our statistics and other empirical evidence could not. Our
cameras captured and revealed perhaps the most honest, compelling
information that could not be found in a document. Nine-year-old
hockey players not only were getting injured - they were also 'learning'
behavior which could perhaps have an impact far greater than any
hockey injury. |
