Question: Does partial sleep deprivation (beginning of night) affect hockey shooting accuracy performance in children and adults the next day?

Hypothesis: If children and adults are partially sleep deprived, then they will perform worse at shot accuracy.

Background/Introduction:

• Sleep is an important activity  for your health. Getting enough sleep helps improve mood and cognition (attention, memory, and planning) (1)
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends the following amounts of sleep per night for good health.
  • 3-5 year-old: 10-13 hours
  • 6-12 year-old: 9-12 hours
  • 13-18 year-old: 8-10 hours
  • Adult: 7 hours or more (2)
• Sleep deprivation is when someone is partly or fully awake over a period of 24-72 hours (3)
  • Partial sleep deprivation (partial sleep within 24 hours) can be either at the beginning of the night or the end of the night
• It is common not to get enough sleep - parents report that 34% of children ages 6-17 years old do not get enough sleep on an average weeknight. (4)
• Sleepovers are popular and can affect sleep for both children and parents.
• Adequate sleep can maximize performance, while poor sleep has been shown to negatively impact athlete performance in various sports (3)
• However, there haven’t been many studies looking at hockey performance
• Hockey is very popular in Canada, with over 600, 000 players registered in programs in 2024-2025 (5)
• Helping young hockey athletes know when to go to bed may be important so that they keep up good shot accuracy

Sleep recommendations

• Infants* 4 months to 12 months should sleep 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Children 1 to 2 years of age should sleep 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Children 3 to 5 years of age should sleep 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Children 6 to 12 years of age should sleep 9 to 12 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Teenagers 13 to 18 years of age should sleep 8 to 10 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health (6)

Controlled variables

• Wake-up time
• Ice surface
• Net size
• Mealtime schedule
• Diet (same pre-/post-sleep deprivation for each subject)
• Hockey stick (same pre-/post-sleep deprivation for each subject)
• Distance from net
• Puck
• Judges and criteria used to judge shot accuracy for each skill level
• Number of shots taken

Manipulated variable

• Bedtime and wake up time (sleep duration)

Responding Variable

• Percentage of shots taken that accurately hit target

Study Design: Experimental

Population: Children and adults involved in a weekend sleepover from 2 families

Exclusion criteria:

• Unable to skate or hold hockey stick
• Not able to participate in sleep deprivation

Procedure

• Subjects were asked to go to bed at 8:45 pm the night before testing, wake up at their usual time on day 1 of testing (day 1 = pre-sleep deprivation).
• Shooting accuracy performance was based on 20 shots on net at 5pm on day 1. All shots were taken 17 feet from the net.
• An accurate shot for subjects 4 and 5 (older youth hockey players) was decided by agreement from 2 separate judges if the puck hit one of the top corners of the net. For the rest of the subjects, an accurate shot was decided if the puck was shot into the net (past the goal line)
• On night 1, subjects were asked to go to bed later than normal and wake up 6:30 am on day 2 (day 2 = post-sleep deprivation), which was earlier than normal (to watch the Olympic Gold Medal Match). Bedtime varied by age and sleep deprivation tolerance.
• They were then asked to repeat the shooting accuracy test by the same procedure at 11 am on day 2.
• We did not repeat this trial multiple times. It would not be ethical to put people under sleep deprivation many times (this was an already planned sleepover, meaning the sleep deprivation was probably going to happen any ways). People can also learn to improve their skill over multiple trials, so we didn't want this to affect the results.

Materials

• Hockey puck
• Hockey sticks appropriately sized for different ages/heights
• Hockey skates appropriately sized for different ages/heights
• Community skating rink with hockey nets/lines
• Measuring tape (to measure distance from net)

Analysis

• The average (mean) hockey % shooting accuracies before and after sleep deprivation were calculated (shots made/shots taken x 100%)
• The two averages were compared with the help of a parent supervisor by a paired t-test. This is a test used to see if there are differences between 2 groups over time.
• This test was done with the help of this online program: https://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/ttest1/ (7)
• P-value is how likely the difference that we saw between groups is by chance or coincidence. If it is less than 0.05, it means there is a less than 5% chance that the difference was by chance or coincidence. If it is less than 0.05, the difference is likely to be real. (7)

7 subjects participated in the study, with these features:

• Ages 4-46
• 2 females, 5 males
• 2 adults, 5 children 
• 4 youth hockey players

The table below shows description sleep times for all subjects during the study, as well as ages and skill levels. According to the recommended sleep durations, all subjects got enough sleep the night before the pre-sleep deprivation day, and all subjects did not get adequate sleep on the night before the post-sleep deprivation day.

* Advanced shooters were targeting top corners, whereas beginners/intermediate were just trying to score goals on the net

On the day after partial sleep deprivation:

• Subjects enerally felt more tired the day after partial sleep deprivation, and needing to go to sleep earlier
• Some subjects also reported being more cranky and short tempered the day after sleep deprivation
• Subjects reported that it was generally harder to concentrate on taking their shots, the day after partial sleep deprivation.

Results - Hockey Shooting Accuracy

The average shooting accuracy was 40.7% lower post-sleep deprivation (*p-value <0.0001 by paired t-test, statistically significant)

Mean difference = 40.7% (confidence interval 34.5-46.9%) P <0.0001* *Paired t-test result Extremely statistically significant difference

Partial sleep deprivation adversely affects hockey shooting accuracy in children and adults of different age groups, and across all hockey skill levels.

Discussion:

We found that partial sleep deprivation significantly negatively affects hockey shooting accuracy. Every single subject (varying ages, skill, and youth hockey experience) did worse when they were partly sleep deprived, and the average shot accuracy was approximately 40% lower after partial sleep deprivation.

Possible reasons to explain our results

• Getting optimal sleep helps you with cognitive processes like attention, memory and planning.(8) If it is harder to remember what makes a successful shot, plan to repeat this, and to concentrate during the shot, you are less likely to be accurate with your shooting
• Sleep is an important time where you helps build up your energy for the next day. Sleep deprivation uses up extra energy when you are awake, and shortens the time during sleep to rebuild the energy. (3)
• Sleep deprivation has shown to make people feel more tired during the same exercise (9), so in this study, it could have made subjects feel more tired after many shots on net
• Sleep deprivation has been shown in other sports to lower accuracy, and increase your reaction time and chance of making mistakes (10,11)
• Sleep deprivation can make you more likely to be sad or to worry (12) and that can affect how well you do on any test

This is the first study we could find investigating sleep deprivation and effects on hockey shot accuracy involving Canadian children and adults, and the results show a lower performance on a skill. This would fit with the results of other studies, showing that partial sleep deprivation has an overall negative effect on sports skill control. (3) As some examples:

• junior soccer players performed worse on continuous kicking (juggling) tests after sleep deprivation (10)
• basketball players made less successful free throws after sleep deprivation (11)
• handball players had better shot accuracy after long naps compared to when they had short or no naps (13).

• This is the first study we could find investigating sleep deprivation and effects on hockey shot accuracy involving Canadian children and adults
• This project is important because many people in Canada play hockey, and it would help them to know to go to bed on time the night before a competition and wake up at their normal time to avoid partial sleep deprivation, which can lower their shot accuracy and performance the next day.

• If they are not sure what time to go to bed, looking at the recommended sleep times for their age can help them decide how much sleep to get before a hockey game.

• There are lots of ideas for future studies to build on what we did and to learn more about sleep deprivation and how it may effect hockey players

  • We could investigate shot accuracy with different sports to see if sleep deprivation also affects this skill in other sports
  • We could investigate sleep deprivation on hockey shot accuracy with specific groups (certain ages and/or skill levels), and at certain times of the day to see if the effect is the same or different than what we found for all subjects together.
  • We tested partial sleep deprivation from both the beginning and end of the night. We could test only partial sleep deprivation at the beginning of the night, only the end of the night, or even full sleep deprivation (staying up all night)!
  • Shooting accuracy is only one skill in hockey, so other skills could be tested (e.g. stick handling, passing accuracy)
  • Tests of physical strength and endurance could be done, which may be even more affected by sleep deprivation. For example, short skating drills, or longer skating distances could be tested

Possible sources of error

• We tested shooting accuracy at different times of day before and after sleep deprivation, and performance may differ at different times of day
• The judges knew what day subjects were testing on (e.g. whether pre-sleep deprivation or post-sleep deprivation), meaning that they could favour shots as being accurate even if it they were not aware (risk of bias).
• The subjects (including ourselves, the invesigators) also knew what day they were sleep deprived and what they they weren't, so they could have been biased to not try as hard on the day after sleep deprivation.
• The subjects were a mix of adults and kids meaning that skills varied. That resulted in us only being able to test and analyze the performance of the whole group, not people at a certain age or a certain skill.
• The sample size of 7 was good enough to show a difference, but increasing this more would help reduce the chance of bias affecting results.

Ideas to improve on our study and limit error

• Focus on more specific population (youth hockey player, children of certain age)
• Larger numbers of subjects (multiple sleepovers)
• Don't tell judges who was sleep deprived
• Use special targets tied to the corners of the net to try to hit - less judgment required
• Do the test at the same time of the day before and after sleep deprivation

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We would like to acknowledge both of our parents for helping us along the way and allowing us to stay up late in the name of science. We also acknowledge the siblings who stayed up late to serve as test subjects for our project.