In Canada, the country has a west/east divide when it comes to hockey. The sport is popular on the west coast, particularly British Columbia, where the temperatures and lack of snow mean the sport can be played all year round.
Head east and it is a different matter. With three months of heavy snow and temperatures reaching depths of -25C, playing hockey is a difficult ask.
Indoor hockey is keeping the sport alive in the east, but for hockey fans, finding a club is difficult to say the least. In Ottawa, for example, the local league has dwindled down to a few clubs with a limited number of players.
However, two local players wanted their children to have a chance to play the sport they love and so they started, from scratch, structures to allow them to discover and play hockey.
The upshot is two clubs which both have more than 100 players and field teams in various age group – U12, U14 and U16 – competitions.
One of the clubs is the Nepean Nighthawks Field Hockey Club. This club was started by Sandeep Chopra, himself a Masters player for Canada, now a national level umpire and his wife Maureen, who played for the Canadian women’s national team and participated in the 1995 Pan American Games). Maureen’s sister, Michelle Conn is an Olympian, having represented Canada at the Seoul 1988 and Barcelona 1992 Olympics.
Two other members of the Nepean Nighthawks were in the Canadian Team that won a silver medal at the last Youth Olympics, and a couple are on the provisional roster of the U21 Canadian Team ahead of the 2016 Men's Junior Pan American Championships.
Talking about the programme, Sandeep said: “About seven years ago we decided to attempt to start a small programme to introduce field hockey to kids in our community, mostly friends of our own children.
“Nearly everyone of the kids who joined were ice hockey players in the winter and since this is Canada and kids will play anything with the word 'hockey' attached to it they began showing up in numbers that really surprised us specially considering field hockey had virtually gone extinct in Ottawa.
It wasn’t just about the hockey for Sandeep and his family. “We are really building a community and though our vehicle is hockey, we wanted to introduce our kids not only to a new sport but to a family-oriented culture that involved people of many backgrounds. That is the Canadian way for us.”
Such has been the growth of the Nepean Nighthawks that the club is struggling to provide for everyone. With nearly 200 youngsters in age group teams, plus a senior women and a ‘Mom’s learn to Play’ programme, the club is always on the look out for coaches and umpires. To fill this gap, the club runs certification courses for potential umpires and coaches, which in turn creates employment and volunteering opportunities.
The lack of hockey clubs in the region means that finding opposition is always a challenge. In the earliest days, the teams had to travel 500 kilometres to Toronto for matches. However, the birth of Chelsea Phoenix Field Hockey Club just across the river, has led to a friendly but intense rivalry between the two clubs.
Ian Bird is the brains and driving force behind the Chelsea Phoenix, a former international and a double Olympian. Ian represented Canada in the 1988 Seoul Olympics and again in Sydney in 2000.
He moved from Vancouver to Ottawa 15 years ago for work, but was determined to bring hockey back to the area. History was on Bird’s side as there had once been an active hockey scene in Quebec, triggered by the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, but it had all dwindled to extinction in the last 10 years.
Bird and his fellow enthusiasts have been rebuilding the hockey scene and the new club in Chelsea became the only active club in the province – the name ‘Phoenix’ refers to the rising of the club from extinction.
“We simply started and used what was available to us rather than worry about what was missing,” explains Bird. “The beautiful thing about hockey is that all you really need are a bag of sticks, a few balls, and a field. After a few years, and now that we have about 100 players and volunteers, the needs are growing and we're glad to have friends in hockey to help us. Our nearest hockey neighbours in Ottawa, the Nepean Nighthawks, have made such a difference for us.”
“I think the greatest success is the fun we have and the club culture we are trying to build. We focus on creating great experiences and the hockey is simply one part of the picture. A weekend tournament in Toronto always includes something more so that it is a family affair. On the hockey front, we now have teams in U10, U12, U14 and U16 age groups, plus a development programme to send a team to the U16 national championships.”
Neither club is standing still. Both will be contesting the U16 National Championships and work is under way to run the first Eastern Ontario/Western Quebec league.
The west might dominate when it comes to hockey in Canada, but there is definitely a whole heap of Eastern promise.
Projects like this are key to the International Hockey Federation's 'Hockey Revolution' - a 10 year strategy aimed at making hockey a global game that inspires the next generation. To find out more about the Hockey Revolution, click here.
To find out more about field hockey in Canada, click here.
