Head Skate Guard 

By Joey Czarnecki
The accident 

• In 2017 of January I was working my shift as head skate guard at Amelia Park. As a normal shift of
that job my responsibility was to stand by the half boards and make sure everyone is following the
rules of the arena. Even though people follow the rule people still get hurt. So my shift started out
smooth which rarely happens because on Saturday nights we have a middle school skate. The kids
were following the rules and 15 minutes in the skate 2 people had collided right into each other. As
soon as I saw the two people coiled, I knew it was bad based on how one of the boys fell. The other
person who was involved in the accident  was alright. On the other hand the boy who fell had fallen
onto his jaw and hit the ice. Teeth went everywhere and he there was a lot of blood on the ice. 
Experience 

• It happened so fast but me and my partner went to where the boy was now.  We saw the injury and
knew at the moment we would need to call an ambulance. SO I radio to the skate night crew that we
were going to need help. while I called 911 my partner went to attend the kid. After getting off the
phone I started to have a lot of anxiety at this point.  Everything happened so fast  and it felt as if the
world was going a million miles per hour. Having my anxiety go up at this moment I decided to take a
deep breath or like 30 seconds. At this point my training on scenario like this had kicked in.  I first
kicked all of the middle schools' kids off the ice to give injured kid space. After everyone was off the
ice, I decided to put the kid in a separate room where we could give him better attention. At the same
time I directed the Zamboni driver to clean the ice by picking up his teeth and removing the blood
from the ice.  This decision ended up keeping the customers happy so they could get what they paid
for which was to skate in the 2-hour block. Once the kid was in the back room and settled, I had to
fill  out an insurance sheet for the rink.  At that I point we hit a roadblock cause he couldn’t talk. SO I
thought of letting the kid use my cell phone so they could call their parents. This ended up working
because we let them know what had happened to their son and got the information I need. At this
point the ambulance came and pick up the kid.
What I learned
• ITs okay to take a step back and take a deep breath. This overall will
help you in your decision making and make the smarter chooses.