Shoot For A Cure Hockey, established in 2000, is a hockey-focused campaign of the American and Canadian Spinal Research Organizations (registered charities established 1984). It is directly focused on and led by the hockey community. The Shoot For A Cure campaign seeks to raise funds for spinal cord research, to raise awareness of spinal cord injuries in hockey and to promote prevention of hockey-related spinal cord injuries through the Play it Cool ™ prevention program. Since the induction of Shoot For A Cure over $2,000,000 dollars have been raised to further research and development for continued commitment of our ultimate goal to find a cure and prevent future injury.

Almost every week during the regular hockey season a player (amateur or professional) suffers a serious spinal injury. From 1982 – 1996, Canada reported 252 hockey related major spinal cord injuries, followed by Sweden with 54 and the United States with 36. During that same 15-year period, at least 8 players died and 85 required wheelchairs indefinitely due to spinal injuries sustained while playing hockey. Of note, most of these injuries occurred to the cervical spine of players 16-20 years of age who were playing in supervised games, reinforcing the necessity of targeting the minor hockey community with the message of skilled and respectful play. Added in 2006 was the need for developing a prevention program for spinal cord and neurotrauma injuries such as concussions. Concussions are the fastest growing injury in hockey and Shoot For A Cure realized it was important to raise awareness for these catastrophic injury and launched Play it Cool ™. The overall program is to educate coaches, parents and players about what a concussion is, the symptoms of, and the return to play guide lines. www.playitcoolhockey.com