Figure Skating vs. Hockey: Which is better?
Copyright 2001 Patti Itzin

  When parents are signing their kids up for winter sports offered by city park and recreation departments, they usually only have two sports that they can choose from, figure skating and hockey. The choice between the two sports can be hard to make. This paper hopes to persuade parents to choose figure skating over hockey, because figure skating is better than hockey.

  Imagine this:  It's winter, the middle of hockey season, and in order to get to a figure skating locker room you have to walk past all of the hockey locker rooms. The last hockey session has just ended, and all of the sweaty hockey players have just left the ice and gone to their locker rooms.  You begin to walk down the long narrow hall that will take you to your locker room.  Just as you get to the first hockey locker room in the hall you smell something awful. It smells like sweaty socks, and is the worst smell your nose has ever smelled.  As soon as you get a whiff of that horrible smell you realize where it's coming from. That disgusting smell is coming from the hockey players. This story is an example of just how bad hockey players' smell. The smell comes from their equipment because it is rarely washed.  It can't be washed very often because it wears out faster the more it is washed.  Compared to hockey players, figure skaters smell like roses.  The outfits that are worn can be washed numerous times, and because figure skaters wear so few layers, sweat doesn't accumulate, but is able to evaporate easily and quickly into the air.  Figure skaters work just as hard as hockey players, but they smell a thousand times better.

 One of the biggest differences between figure skates and hockey skates are the blades.  Parents should choose to start their kids on figure skates because of the different structures between the hockey blade and the figures skating blade. Figure skate blades have a toe pick on one end and a heel on the other.  The toe pick that is in the front of the blades is a very useful tool in figure skating. There are between 3 and 7 "teeth" that make up the toe pick. The usual use for it is to pole vault a skater into the air on a jump.  The toe pick lifts skaters into the air by digging into the ice.  Other uses include stopping, walking, turning, etc.  The other part of the figure skating blade is the heel. The heel is usually about an inch and a half in length and projects out from the back of the skate.  It is most often used a safety measure. If a skater is leaning back too far it can help prevent them from falling backwards.  The heel is also a useful tool to draw on the ice. When a skater wants to make a mark on the ice they can use their heel to make the mark visible. 

The hockey blade is rounded on both ends, which means that it has no toe pick and no heel. Without these traits there isn't much that can be done with hockey blades besides starting, stopping, and turning. This is another reason figure skating is better than hockey, because a skater can do more with figure skating blades than they can with hockey blades.

One thing that makes figure skating more important than hockey is that figure skaters teach hockey players the fundamentals of how to skate.  From the Brooklyn Park Recreation and Parks Department's Fall 2000 Activity Booklet, "The most important skill in the development of a hockey player is skating and our program will help him/her develop at a faster rate with our USFSA (United States Figure Skating Association) Professional Skating School staff." This quote helps to illustrate just how important figure skaters and figure skating are. The basics in any skating sport, hockey, figure skating, speed skating, etc., start in figure skating.  These basics include starting and stopping, falling and getting back up, and how to use the blade most effectively in gaining speed.  Learning the basic steps of skating begins in figure skating lessons taught by figure skaters.

 The biggest difference between figure skating and hockey is violence and injuries.  Hockey is a very violent sport (William O. Roberts, MD).  Because of the number of concussions, broken bones, and even paralysis, the sport of hockey is a very dangerous sport to play, especially if you are a male athlete. A study, published in The Physician and Sports Medicine (Vol. 27, November 1999) written by William O. Roberts MD, cites that players as young as 5 years old recorded 0.09 concussions per 1,000 player-hours.  A high school hockey study reported a rate of 10 per 100 players per season.  This same study also found that in the United States there is a direct fatality and injury rate of 3.11 per 100,000 high school hockey players and 11.55 per 100,000 at the college level.  Most of these injuries occur when the athlete is struck from behind or falls and hits the boards.  Figure skating, on the other hand, has no violence associated with it, besides the Tonya Harding drama, and has a very small injury rate.  So small, in fact, that I could find no data specifically about the injury rate in figure skating. From my experience, most of the injuries in figure skating are bumps, bruises, and the occasional sprain, strain, or broken limb.  Every sport has some injuries associated with it, but figure skating is definitely one of those with the fewest.

 Figure skating and hockey are two very popular winter sports and choosing which one to participate in can be difficult.  Figure skating is a better choice, when it comes to signing your kids up for one of them, because hockey is very violent, smelly, and doesn't teach them the fundamentals of how to skate. Starting your kids in figure skating teaches them the fundamentals of skating and makes them better skaters if they choose to switch sports, as they get older.  Starting kids out in hockey doesn't teach them much about how to skate and this could lower their self esteem when they find out that they can't skate as well as the kids who had taken skating lessons before starting hockey.