As an athlete, I’ve been injured what feels like hundreds of times. Whether it was my ankle, knee, or shoulder, sometimes it felt like nothing could protect me from the dangers of contact sports.

When participating in high school athletics, there are rules put in place to supposedly guide sports on the field, pitch, court, or track. But what happens when the rules don’t work? What happens when they are ignored?

On Jan. 21, 2024, the MN boys hockey club team was playing a match against the Lincoln Capitals East program when aggression began to arise on the ice. As the game began, Thomas Leary, the MN hockey head coach took notice. Leary brought the issue up to the game referees but was asked to ‘sit down and shut up’, according to a statement on the Mustang Hockey Instagram. In the second period, sophomore Maksim Mantsorov left the game with a broken ankle, after getting plummeted while not being in possession of the puck, an illegal action in hockey.

In the next period, the violence continued to persist. MN club player and Conestoga Jr./Sr. High School sophomore Jace Thomas received a hit to the head, suffering a spinal cord injury in which he was unable to walk and had no recollection of the event.

As Thomas underwent surgeries and navigated physical therapy to regain control and strength of his limbs, his family and support group heard news that the player who leveled the hit had a court mandate scheduled to decide what the punishment for his aggression would be.

“He, the player who illegally hit Jace, had a prior history of doing stick-slashing, where you hit another’s stick for no reason,” Mantsorov said. “And he got an equal punishment for the head [injury] as stick-slashing, which is just ridiculous,”

The offender had been suspended for five games. Five. Games.

In other words, the assaulter received the same punishment one would receive if they bad-mouthed an official, or stick-slashed, as Mantsorov explained, while Thomas, a dedicated three-sport athlete, received the verdict that he could never participate in any contact athletics again.

This poses some grand questions: how should one deal with dangerous players? Is a five-game punishment proportionate to never being able to play hockey, or any other sport for that matter, not to mention having to finance the expenses and undergo the struggles of physical therapy and surgery? Obviously, there is a great disparity between these two results.

As hockey is not considered an NSAA sport in Nebraska, Nebraska high school hockey affairs are under no obligation to function under NSAA rules. This leaves a kind of a free range for programs to “decide” on their own.

“Right now, there’s been a huge epidemic in our league. The Omaha Hockey Club, has not been regulating rules or enforcing them very well. This shows when in a regular game players are getting hit dirty where one player gets their leg hurt and the other gets a permanent injury where he can never play a contact sport again,” Mantsorov said.

High school hockey rules are governed by USA Hockey’s play rules. Post-game discipline is administered by the Midwest Amateur Hockey Association’s  (MWAHA), according to Leary.

USA Hockey’s 2021-25 rules have explicit rulings against unprovoked and unsportsmanlike aggression, as stated in these excerpts from the organization’s website: “Intimidation tactics have no place in ice hockey. These tactics include any contact to the head of the opponent, checking from behind and late body checks to an opponent who is no longer in control of the puck,” and “[USA Hockey] officials are required to strictly enforce all actions that are deemed to be abusive in nature…”

Although the MWAHA follows this rulebook and pledge, on their website, to copy any cases handled by the organization on the website and display “all game suspensions and probation periods” on the site, the organization has not done this for Jace’s case, and for what I can tell, any cases lately, as the suspensions page online is completely blank.

“These refs in the league will just not call anything. No one is saying anything and it results in more aggressiveness towards players like with dirty bad hits and fights,” Mantsorov said.

“We Stand For Jace”, a small movement among the Omaha hockey community, has swept across many hockey teams, past Millard North activities and athletics.

“‘We Stand For Jace’ signifies how we believe in Jace’s cause because he was done just so wrong by those referees and rules,” Mantsorov said. “ We stand behind this cause for the better improvement of our league,”

The MWAHA strives, in their mission statement, to “promote a safe, positive experience for all”. Similarly, in their mission statement, Omaha Hockey Club aims to “deliver an atmosphere of healthy competition for all the youth of Omaha and surrounding communities”. But both of these mission statements were not enough for Jace Thomas and his family. Jace is now suffering the consequences of failure in the MWAHA and Omaha Hockey Club’s implementation of these declarations.

Athlete protection means more than just words pixelated on a web page, and should even encompass all sorts of player safety. In Jace’s name, Millard North hockey invites club sports organizations to reflect on their treatment of athletes and how much they are really providing a “safe, positive experience for all”.