On a brisk New Jersey November evening, the Wolves take the ice against the Falcons in a youth hockey game at Montclair’s Clary Anderson Arena. Teenage skaters in full protective—gear, mouthguards, helmets; but no masks, for the most part—skate across the ice, body check one another and race for the puck, their panting breath visible inside the rink’s icy air.
Parents, coaches, and kids in New Jersey’s youth hockey leagues are clinging to some sense of normalcy, however risky it might be, as the state’s COVID-19 positivity rate surpasses 10%, and nearly 2,500 people in the state are hospitalized with the virus.
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“Shut the school down. Don’t shut hockey down. You can go to school online,” said Brendan Reilly, coach of the Falcons, a team based in Englewood. “There’s no reason to panic with hockey. We’re taking care of ourselves.”
Unlike New York, where competitive games in team sports deemed high risk are forbidden, New Jersey is allowing teams in those sports to practice and compete, though there’s now a more strict prohibition on spectators, and teams can’t leave the state.
The State’s Health Department has increasingly linked youth sports to recent COVID-19 cases; thirty-three percent of outbreaks the department had tracked in the month of October, up from 17 percent earlier this year. State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said they had identified fourteen discrete outbreaks, linked to more than 70 COVID-19 cases associated with hockey teams in particular, in seven counties.
“I want to say very specifically, hockey is in our crosshairs,” Governor Phil Murphy warned on Monday. He said they’d gotten reports of hockey parents, in particular, not cooperating with contact tracers. “I’ve got nothing against hockey, but watch yourselves. We have that high on the list right now and unless we see better compliance and lower levels of infection, we will take action.”
At the Montclair rink, Reilly bristled at the Governor’s remarks.
“That really frustrated me, because obviously he has no idea of what we go through as a hockey team, to fulfill our season, and what we’re doing inside to prevent COVID,” he said. “He’s unaware.”
A hockey match at Montclair’s Clay Anderson Arena
Ice hockey has been linked to COVID cases nationwide, with The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even deeming it a potential superspreader event, following one game in Tampa Bay on June 16, where 14 of 22 players and a member of the rink staff were sickened, though players spent time in a locker room without masks.
Several local epidemiologists pointed to the combination of cooler air temperatures, which are thought to allow airborne viruses like COVID to linger longer, as well as players breathing heavily on the ice without masks, as a cause for concern.
“I would not let my kid play indoor hockey,” said Dr. Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at CUNY University’s School of Public Health. “I’ve advised friends who do play ice hockey in New Jersey that they shouldn’t.”
Dr Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist and professor of public health at Montclair State University agreed.
“I’m a sports fan, I grew up watching hockey. I understand the urge to want to have that continue,” she said. But she added, “We need to be really mindful of balancing what we want, versus the needs of our healthcare system.”
Hockey coaches and parents point to all the changes they’ve put in place to make the sport safer this season. There are temperature checks before you enter the rink. No one is allowed to change in the locker room; instead kids strip down and suit up in the parking lot, no matter how cold it is.
No parents are allowed to watch the games inside.
And no parents are allowed inside the rink to watch their kids skate. During Wednesday night’s game, some parents were sitting in their cars, idling in the parking lot, watching a livestream of the game on their phones.
“Not being able to go inside and support them, even if sometimes you gotta scream at them, we miss that,” said 54-year-old Carlos Folleco from Wayne. “You’re allowed to be at a restaurant without a mask, but why can’t the parents of athletes put a mask on and watch the game?”
Teams are also required to follow strict quarantine rules. If a family member of a player tests positive, they can’t play for 14 days. If someone on the team tests positive, the whole team takes two weeks off. Matt Anderson is the coach and manager of Union Thunder Youth Hockey, as well as the program’s COVID-19 coordinator. At times, he said, their phone tree, between teams and parents, is quicker than the state’s Health Department.
“We’re shutting our team down, one, two, three days before anybody gets a call from a contact tracer,” Anderson said. That happened with five of Union Thunder’s 28 teams since Halloween, he said. Four of the teams were high school players who’d attended Halloween parties, and were thought to have contracted the virus there.
At the game in Montclair at least one player on the Wolves was quarantined after his mother tested positive, according to coach Ken Lilien. And while some parents say they’re frustrated by the rules prohibiting them from watching their kids from the stands, they say they’re grateful to even have a hockey season.
“They have so much energy when they come to the rink cause they’re not in school all day with their friends. Getting the socialization of being around their teammates has become so important to them,” Lilien said. “We’re lucky to be playing hockey at all.”
