Hockey Times: The Sport Through The Ages

Filed under: hockey tips

When we think of hockey, we usually think of the bright lights of today’s modern ice rinks and jerseyed players skating across the ice in today’s latest ice skates. The game is a lot older than this modern image. Tracing back hockey’s lineage is strange, considering that the sport is derived from multiple sources and can be found in multiple settings. The Native American Micmacs of Northen Canada were known to have a game that involved hitting a ball with sticks, lacrosse is another modern sport that was known to have been derived from a modification of this Native American game.

This is not to say that hockey originated from North America. Europe had its own fair share of native games that involved a ball and a team armed with sticks. Shinny or Shinty is a Scottish game for two teams that involved hitting a ball consistently across a field to another team’s goal. Another game that hockey could be based on is the Irish game of hurling, though that game’s stick has more in similarity to a modern lacrosse stick than today’s curved hockey sticks. A dozen other regional variations can be found in examples through world history of games involving curved sticks and balls, with the earliest example being an Egyptian carving dating from 4000 BC. These sports are obviously the ancestor’s of today’s field hockey.

The modern version of hockey that is being played nowadays can trace itself to as recently as the 19th century. The first recorded games of ice hockey were played British soldiers stationed at the Canadian province of Ontario, while the first standardized rules of the game would be drawn up in the 1870’s by students at the Mcgill University of Montreal. The influence of Montreal in ice hockey’s development cannot be overstated, the first official games were played here and the first world championship was held there in 1886.

Field hockey’s beginnings can be found on the other side of the Atlantic, in the fields of England’s public schools. Cricket teams used to play it as a winter sport. The first official game of field hockey was played at Blackheath in 1849 and the game developed quickly, eventually forming a formal Hockey Association in 1886.

Modern hockey development rocketed after this, eventually becoming the sport that we come to know and love today.