For 12-year-old Kayla Watkins, the public humiliation was too much.After learning a parent on her coed peewee hockey team — comprised entirely of boys except for her — called for restrictions on her ice time or her removal from the team unless her skills improved, she did the only thing she thought she could: She quit.
“I felt that if I went back all the parents would have been watching every move I made and always staring at me,” said the outgoing preteen, who has been playing the game since the age of four.
“To play hockey you shouldn’t have to go through what I went through. I was just looking to have friendship and play the game I love.”
The controversy that seized the Toronto Ice Dogs PeeWee “A” club — minor hockey’s lowest level of competitive play — emerged last month at a parents’ meeting called by George Atis, who has a child on the team, but is not part of the coaching staff.
The Thornhill lawyer drafted the agenda which included this item: “Kayla Watkins — Player Ability Limitations and Suggested Options.”
“It is now 14 games into the season and I have noticed that Kayla’s play has not improved,” the agenda reads. “It is at the point where many of the team members do not want to play on this team if this situation is not addressed.”
Atis then details two possible options for consideration, either moving Kayla from defence to forward and keeping her off of power plays and penalty kills, or playing her every second shift on defence and again keeping her off special teams “until her skating and shooting improves.”
“If Kayla is NOT amenable to the above options, the coach should find Kayla a new team to play on — commensurate to her skill level — for the balance of the season,” the agenda reads.
Atis also raised concerns about Kayla changing in the same locker-room as the boys, stating, “there have been many ‘near miss’ incidents where the boys have almost been exposed to Kayla.”
Vanessa Watkins, Kayla’s mother and team manager, says she was shocked by Atis’s targeting of her daughter.
“Do we not put our kids in team sports to learn to be a team player, to win as a team, to lose as a team and it’s not about me, me, me?”
In an interview Monday, Atis defended the agenda, saying it voiced concerns from boys on the team who were both squeamish about undressing in front of Kayla and frustrated with her play on the ice.
“I wrote the agenda, I stand by it,” said Atis, whose son Michael has played with Kayla for the past two seasons until her recent departure.
“I lay the blame, if you must know, at the feet of Vanessa Watkins . . . If it was my child, he would have never been in that position because I would not have put him on a team where he was not competing and where he was a liability to the team.”
While such disputes are common at higher levels such as triple-A hockey, they shouldn’t happen at single-A, Kayla said.
“(Atis) is not my coach so I don’t know how he’s judging my play,” she said. “If there’s something wrong, my coach should have talked to me, not him. And my coach never did.”
Paul Macchia, Kayla’s coach, says he chose her to be on his team and never wanted her to leave.
“There’s always complaints from parents about ice time but I’ve never seen an issue where it has gone this far before,” he said. “I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish. It’s not an individual player losing a game. She made mistakes but so did others on the team. We’ve been the same since she left.”
The team is currently 10th out of 12 teams in their division with a record of 8-13-1.
Sheree Watkins, Kayla’s grandmother who attended the meeting and many of her granddaughter’s games, called it a mean-spirited attack on the team’s only girl.
“It floored me that a lawyer would write an agenda like that. There was just so much discrimination.”
Atis said he supports coed hockey generally and that his move wasn’t about gender discrimination. It was about skill level.
“This should have never come down to a singling out of Kayla in this fashion. I think you should look to Vanessa and ask her if she felt truly in her heart . . . if Kayla was at the same level as her teammates.”
Kayla found out about everything when she spotted a copy of the agenda in her mom’s email.
“I was very upset. I do think parents can be over the edge,” she said.
Atis said he never intended Kayla to see the agenda.
“As a parent, my heart goes out to her. If Kayla truly read this agenda by accident, it is very unfortunate . . . I am mortified that Vanessa or Sheree or whoever shared this agenda with Kayla would actually do so . . . I believe Kayla’s feelings could have been spared. That, to me, is the great shame in this process that Kayla would feel as she did.”
Since quitting the Ice Dogs, Kayla has moved to the all-girls North York Storm.
She may miss the challenge of playing with boys. But the culture is far more welcoming, she says.
“Everyone’s nice to each other. It doesn’t matter if we win or lose. If we lose a game, it’s okay because everyone picks each other up.”
1 comment:
Wow. I am apalled.
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