This past week, Mike and Ryan chatted about the possibility of hitting in women’s hockey and the lack of coverage of amateur athletes at the CIS level.

 

Allow hitting in women’s hockey (Ryan)

Recently, I was doing some commentary for the Bisons women’s hockey team and I was witnessing a lot of body checking penalties being called by the referee. I thought to myself, why isn’t hitting allowed in women’s hockey?

According to Carlyn Schellenberg in an editorial written for the Manitoban last year, the men making the rules for women’s hockey thought that women were too dainty to be hitting each other and that it was unladylike to be hitting.

That is completely ridiculous. Women box, do MMA against each other, and wrestle each other. Why in God’s name are they not allowed to hit in hockey? It is extremely sexist in my opinion, and something should be done about it.

You could say that because there is no hitting in the women’s game, it emphasizes skill rather than beating the hell out of each other. In my opinion that is false. The purpose of a body check in the game of hockey is to separate the player from the puck, nothing else. Taking hitting out of the game of hockey is like playing baseball with an orange – not effective.

Women’s hockey has come a long way, and female hockey leagues should make an effort to allow hitting into the women’s game. I would stand by it and back it to the hilt. There is no reason as to why women shouldn’t be allowed to hit each other. The third most common penalty called in women’s hockey is body checking, so just let them do it already.

 

CIS athletes deserve better coverage (Mike)

At the end of 2015, the Winnipeg Free Press published an in-depth feature on swingman Keith Omoerah from the Bisons men’s basketball team. Just under a month later, a piece was written about co-captain Jordan DePape from the men’s hockey team. What do these two stories have in common? Both of the players featured were doing big things for their respective teams at the time – as the basketball team had posted a 6-2 start to the regular season with Omoerah averaging roughly 35 minutes per game, while DePape was leading (and ended up winning) the Canada West conference scoring race.

I’m not saying these players don’t deserve the publicity they’ve gotten (I went to high school with Keith and have covered Jordan’s journey before), it’s simply frustrating that in order for our Bison athletes to gain coverage, it appears that they have to be performing at a noticeable level or otherwise get ignored.

This past summer, I co-wrote an in-depth Bisons sports magazine with Scott Taylor and had the opportunity to learn the stories of a number of players on different teams for the herd. There’s a lot to be known about our university athletes, who come from a variety of different backgrounds, and just because their particular team may not have fared very well doesn’t mean they should be ignored.

University sport has increased in popularity in terms of national coverage over the past few years (Jim Mullin and Krown Countdown U being the best example), and due to this boost, I believe it’s important that local newspapers follow the trend.

Winnipeg only has four pro teams (the Jets, Moose, Bombers, and Goldeyes), and there’s only so much you can report about said teams before articles start getting repetitive. Why not increase CIS coverage and provide stories about our university athletes that are new, unique, and interesting?

 

You can hear more sports opinion from Ryan Stelter and Mike Still on Steltsy & Still, Tuesdays at 10 a.m. on 101.5 UMFM.