BROOMFIELD, Colo. (KDVR) – A Colorado teenager is recovering after his neck was sliced by a skate during a hockey game Friday.
Reed Borgman is the son of an employee at Nexstar’s Denver news station, KDVR. Reed was injured when he and another player fell to the ice.
“While I was falling down, his skate hit my neck and sliced it. I didn’t really know what happened at the time,” Reed said.
His father, Ryan Borgman, took him to an urgent care for stitches and Reed is going to be fine.
But it was a close call. In rare cases, other players have died from similar injuries.
Providers told the family that if the cut was one inch over, it could have been deadly.
“It was scary. I got chills because you think about what could have happened,” Ryan said.
The Borgmans will now require Reed to wear a neck guard moving forward, and they wonder why it isn’t a requirement.
Earlier this year, a Connecticut 16-year-old died after a similar incident.
Teddy Balkind, a sophomore at St. Luke’s School, was taken to Greenwich Hospital and died that night as a result of the injury, according to officials.
Recently, the 10th grader’s friend, Sam Brande, started an online petition, asking the governing body for organized ice hockey to mandate the safety gear. The governing body for interscholastic sports among secondary schools in Connecticut requires all hockey players to wear neck protection, but that rule doesn’t apply to private schools or youth hockey programs.
In a statement earlier this year, USA Hockey said:
USA Hockey continues to recommend a neck laceration protector for all players. The heightened discussions around lacerations from a skate blade reinforce the recommendation that players wear a neck laceration protector that covers as much of the neck as possible along with cut-resistant socks, sleeves or undergarments. USA Hockey, led by its safety and protective equipment committee, will work with equipment companies and maintain efforts to ensure the safest possible environment for all participants.
USA Hockey statement
It added, “There is sparse data on neck laceration prevalence, severity and neck laceration protector [neck guard] effectiveness.”
