Sweden blazes trail in women's hockey by allowing body checking and finds health, quality benefits

ÖRNSKÖLDSVIK, Sweden (AP) — Lauren Bellefontaine came off the ice after a game in Sweden’s top women’s hockey league and detailed the toll her body had just taken.

“I got a stick to the collarbone tonight and also a hit to the head. Definitely some bumps and bruises,” she said with a smile. “But I’m feeling fine.”

Growing up in Canada, Bellefontaine kept hearing people ask why there was no hitting in women’s hockey. It has taken a move to northern Sweden for her to discover the more physical side of the sport.

In 2022, Sweden became the first country to introduce body checking to its premier women’s league, bringing its rule book closer to men’s hockey even though hockey’s world governing body does not formally allow the practice because of safety concerns. It has opened up a new world for women's players, who say they feel more empowered playing the game the way it was intended.

Swedish hockey officials say the results have been overwhelmingly positive: The women’s game has become faster and more entertaining while concussions, which have been a scourge for the sport, have decreased.

Other countries are now looking to follow suit, with the PWHL — the professional women’s league in North America with some of the world's top players — putting checking in the rules for its inaugural season last year.

“It has given us the opportunity to prove we’re physical, we’re strong and we can play just like the men’s players,” Bellefontaine said. “It allows us to show we can — and we will.”

Bellefontaine joined MoDo for the start of the 2023-24 season. It’s a title-contending team from Örnsköldsvik, a sleepy coastal town some 530 kilometers (330 miles) north of Stockholm — and not far from the Arctic Circle — whose population of 30,000 lives and breathes hockey and whose most famous alumni include NHL greats Peter Forsberg, Henrik and Daniel Sedin, and Markus Naslund.

Initially it was something of a culture shock to her.

“I had no prior experience of hitting at all,” the 25-year-old Bellefontaine said, “and we went right into the season so it took me a while to get into it … it was tough but now it’s just fun.”

Safer, too.

Statistics supplied by the Swedish women’s league show the number of concussions sustained by players has dropped since 2018, when its “Project Zero Vision” was launched. There were 35 reported concussions in the 2018-19 regular season, 10 in 2022-23 and 15 in 2023-24. By Jan. 8 this year, which was approaching the end of the regular season, there had been six.

Preventing concussions was the main driver behind the introduction of checking, as counterintuitive as that may seem. It has forced players to skate with their heads up, increasing their ice awareness.

There have been other benefits of bringing back checking, which was part of the game in women’s hockey in Europe and North America until the mid-1980s but isn’t in the International Ice Hockey Federation’s current rule book. Coaches, league officials and fans say the speed of the Swedish game has gotten quicker, as players make smarter and faster decisions.

For many, it restores the balance between skill and physicality that is important in making the sport an entertaining watch.

“It creates some tension in the game that you otherwise don’t get,” said Luc de Keijzer, a 27-year-old student who is a regular at MoDo games.

One big hope is that increased physical play makes Sweden more competitive at the international level against traditional hockey powers like the United States, Canada and Finland. Sweden's women's team regularly goes deep in world championships and Olympic Games but hasn't won the gold medal at either tournament.

For some female players, the biggest effect has been to make them feel more empowered. That’s because they are essentially following the same rules as the men, except for one key difference: hits on open ice — when players are skating freely away from the boards — are forbidden in women’s hockey.

“We’re trying to close the gap between men’s and women’s hockey, so this is one way we are doing it — to have similar rules as they do,” said Alexie Guay, another Canadian playing for MoDo. “It’s not as intense and there are different rules still — I don’t know if there will be fighting in women’s hockey in the future — but we’re definitely closing the gap and I think it’s a cool thing.”

According to research by Lund University in Sweden, 88% of the 159 players from the league who responded to a questionnaire said they were in favor of checking.

Jared Cipparone, the coach of MoDo’s women’s team, said he hasn’t encountered any resistance from his players about checking.

“Everyone was excited about it,” said Cipparone, who is also from Canada. “The first year was trial and fire for many, but last year and this year you see the significance it’s made in the game and I’ve only heard good things about it.”

At MoDo’s home game against HV71 at Hagglunds Arena in early January, a MoDo player was almost knocked off her skates by a full-body hit. Many others were smashed into the boards but went on with the game. There were no roughing penalties and certainly no brawling.

The 5-foot-7 Bellefontaine, who describes herself as “pretty small,” has had to adapt her game. She said she trains harder, watches what she eats to “bulk up a little bit” and is making use of the sauna in her apartment for post-match recovery.

“I’m definitely squeezing my core a little more,” she said. “Before, I wouldn’t even expect to be hit so now it’s head on a swivel, always looking, always watching, and just being ready to take a hit. You have to make sure you’re not in a position to jeopardize yourself.

“It’s definitely changed the way we play and made us better players.”

USA Hockey and Hockey Canada do not allow checking in girls and women's hockey. In Sweden, body checking is part of the rules for boys and girls starting at the age of 12. League officials say being educated so early prepares players for when they are older.

MoDo fan Marie Johansson said her 18-year-old daughter, Amanda, started with checking from age 12, initially while playing with boys.

“All parents are worried about their children getting injured,” Johansson said, “but when they learn to do the checking, they train a lot, they learn how to hold their heads up high, and she learnt how to avoid injuries. I don’t think because she’s a girl I’ve been more worried than if she’d been a boy.”

Morgan Johansson, an official who helped to launch the Zero Vision project, said he has shared information with the IIHF and the PWHL about the effects the rule change has had on the Swedish league. Norwegian and Danish leagues have also contacted him.

Last year, the IIHF had PWHL officials in North America outline the league’s rules on checking and officiating in a potential first step to modify its rulebook and provide a new standard at international competitions, league vice president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford said.

Contacted by the AP, the IIHF said its rulebook “does not prohibit competitive body contact between players” but noted its staff was working with its membership "to clarify the interpretation of this part in women’s hockey.”

As for the Swedes, they are happy to have made the bold step that others are starting to follow.

“We are kind of a trailblazer when it comes to women’s hockey in challenging the old structures that said, ‘Women can’t,’” said Angelica Lindeberg, operations manager for the Swedish league. “Now we say, of course they can. We are very proud of that.”

AP Hockey Writer John Wawrow contributed.

AP women's hockey: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-hockey

Modo's Ebba Hedqvist, second right, in acton during a Swedish Women's hockey league match against HV71 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

Modo's Ebba Hedqvist stand on the side of the ice during a Swedish Women's hockey league match against HV71 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

HV71's Kennedy Bobyck, left, collides with Modo's Alexa Gruschow during their Swedish Women's hockey league match in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

Modo's Wilma Sundin, right, is challenged by HV71's Audrey-Anne Veillette during their Swedish Women's hockey league match in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

Modo's Andrea Brändli prepares for a Swedish Women's hockey league match against HV71 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

Modo's Ella Albinsson, left, and Mariam El-Mahmadi, challenge HV71's Kennedy Bobyck during their Swedish Women's hockey league match in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

Modo's Sanna Halsius, right, challenges HV71's Emmi Rakkolainen during their Swedish Women's hockey league match in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

HV71's Kennedy Bobyck, left, collides with Modo's Alexa Gruschow during their Swedish Women's hockey league match in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

HV71's Malva Lindgren and Modo's Darcie Lappan clash during their Swedish Women's hockey league match in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

HV71's Teghan Inglis, left, challenges Modo's Alexie Guay during their Swedish Women's hockey league match in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, on Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Johan Löf)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)