A jarring racial attack has left a young Toronto hockey player contemplating whether he ever wants to play the game again. "It broke me.
I turned into a ghost. I didn't know what to do," 15-year-old Yonas Nicola-Lalonde said of the alleged incident. "After it ended, I skated off the ice and went to the change room and tried to recompose myself because I was in so much shock. "I felt empty.
I felt useless. It made me not want to play anymore and just retire from hockey." The incident happened Sept. 30 in a game between Nicola-Lalonde's Humber Valley Sharks team and the Forest Hill Force, both of the Greater Toronto Hockey League.
It all started with a fairly innocuous play. Nicola-Lalonde's team was breaking out of its end and one of his teammates was body checked by an opposing player, though the game was being played under non-contact rules.