Indoor Field Hockey Comes to Shawnigan
Indoor field hockey . . . what's that?
Played 5-on-5 plus goalies on a smaller, indoor court with low side-boards marking the sidelines to keep the ball in field, this fast-paced, spectator friendly game is in its first official season at Shawnigan.
A mixture of grade 10 to 12 athletes are the fledgling group of athletes, who are getting an intense introduction to the game of indoor field hockey and are proving to be more than competent at this technical alternative of the outdoor game. A few brief practices prior to the December holidays propelled them into a women's division tournament in Vancouver at the beginning of January. Despite squaring off against opponents that included UBC and UVIC, the young Shawnigan squad fought their way to the final and only missed bringing home the title by one goal versus an experienced Vancouver Hawks team.
The following weekend saw two Shawnigan teams entered in the annual UVIC indoor tournament, where their strong performances resulted in Shawnigan Gold facing off against Shawnigan Black in the semi-final. Both teams fought hard but Shawnigan Black had the winning edge to move forward to the finals, while Shawnigan Gold set their sights on a bronze medal game.
Unfortunately, both teams were pulled up short of their ultimate goals by a power-outage that cut the tournament short. Nonetheless, both teams can be proud of their top finishes and re-focus on their up-coming junior tournament in Duncan this week.
Indoor field hockey originated in Germany in the 1950s as a way to bridge the winter months when temperatures dropped too low to pursue the outdoor game on frozen turfs. While wildly popular in Europe, indoor field hockey has only really started to pick up pace in North America at the beginning of the millennium when the first official World Cup was held in 2003. It continues to grow at a steady pace and is considered an essential element for improving technical possession skills for the bigger outdoor game.
– Kelly Koepp, Coach