Field Hockey!!!!!

            Field Hockey is a very popular sport overseas for males and females. In the United States however, Field Hockey is predominately a female sport with few males participating in it here. Some people here have barely heard of the sport. Sometimes when I tell people that I used to play field hockey they would respond with, “Field Hockey? What’s that?” So I would have to explain that it is a game where you can use either a composite stick made of carbon, fibroglass, or other materials, or a wood stick, and you play on a football field and you hit a bright orange ball to your teammates on the field in order to make it into your opponent’s goal. There are 11 players on each team on the field at once in the high school and outdoor travel level, including a goalie. For indoor field hockey you play on wood floors with 5 girls on each team with a thinner stick and the game is played at a much faster rate. I have played indoor and outdoor at the middle school, high school, and travel level. Field Hockey was my main sport and it is very strange that I am still not doing it. I miss it a ton so I might possibly try out for the club team next semester and see how that goes, but that also means that I will have to get in shape this summer which could be quite difficult. Field Hockey was popular in my county and is becoming more popular across the country, but it is still nowhere near as popular as it is in European countries. No one knows exactly when or where the sport was invented but there are thought to have been drawings of men in the Beni-Hasen tomb in Egypt that are playing a sport that portrays field hockey (Castellone and Dimauro). It is very popular for men to play in Europe and also quite popular for women. I went to a camp with my high school team two summers ago where we had international players as coaches, with one coach from Ireland and the other from Spain and they were amazing. It was definitely very cool to have them coaching us and giving us tips since they are on their national teams. Since a woman, Constance Applebee, started Field Hockey in the United States in the early 1901, it is a female sport here. (Castellone and Dimauro). So this sport is not an old old sport but it is mildly new. Field Hockey was my life in high school and is definitely one of the things I miss about high school and living at home.

http://www.uri.edu/personal/tcas8605/