WATERLOO - Local hockey fans are wild about their Waterloo Black Hawks. The tough and talented team has inspired even the smallest of fans to lace up skates and grab a stick to emulate their hometown heroes on ice.

But when little tykes hit the rink, the game changes. The rough-and-tumble ways of the older Black Hawks are set aside in the interest of safety.

Though children as young as 3 can join the Junior Hawks youth hockey league, they can't begin the practice of body checking until they reach the PeeWee division at ages 11 and 12. USA Hockey defines body checking as "using the hip or shoulder to impede the progress of an opponent who has the puck."

Injuries rise when players are old enough to body check, according to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a division of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In 2007, an estimated 19,400 youths under 18 were injured playing hockey in the U.S. About 10 percent of those occurred in youths between the ages of 2 and 10. Some 20 percent - about 4,000 - of those injuries occurred in children ages 11 and 12.

Dr. Richard Naylor, an orthopedic surgeon at Covenant Medical Center, said he sees six to 10 youth hockey injuries per season.

"I see more injuries of those same variety in adults than in kids," Naylor said. "I'd say it's about average proportions in hockey and football, from a contact standpoint."

Joe Kremer, president of the Waterloo Youth Hockey Association, agreed that kids who play hockey are no more susceptible to injury than kids in other contact sports, though he noted the association doesn't track injuries. Kremer said minor injuries, like strained muscles and bruises, are a regular occurrence.

"If the kids employ the proper technique when they try to check someone, or they apply the proper technique when they are getting checked, the risk of injury is low," Kremer said.

Naylor said clavicle injuries are the most common ones he sees from checking, and they take a player out of the game for at least six weeks.

"In the younger ones you don't see (clavicle injuries), but once they start checking against the walls you see those," Naylor said.

A 2006 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics that studied differences in checking ages among Canadian provinces found that checking at a younger age increased the likelihood of injury. The study also noted there were no apparent protective effects from learning to body check earlier rather than later.

Kremer, who has two children in youth hockey, believes hockey is a safe sport for kids.

"There are specific guidelines that we enforce within our association, (like the) type of equipment as far as helmets, face guards, mouthpieces," Kremer said. "(Players) are, for the most part, protected."

Contact Amie Steffen at (319) 291-1464 or amie.steffen@wcfcourier.com.