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What is Hockey?
Hockey has been played for longer than any of us has been alive, but we
can't tell you exactly when it was invented, or by whom, because no one
really knows for sure. We do have some idea of how it got started, however,
and we can describe the ways the game has grown and changed over the years.
Once a relatively obscure recreation for people who lived in the north
country, hockey is now played all over the world and has become one of
the most popular winter sports. Frankly, we don't know what we'd do without
it, and millions of other people feel the same way.
The Origins of the Game
Most historians place the roots of hockey in the chilly climes of northern
Europe, specifically Great Britain and France, where field hockey was
a popular summer sport more than 500 years ago. When the ponds and lakes
froze in winter, it was not unusual for the athletes who fancied that
sport to play a version of it on ice.
An ice game known as kolven was popular in Holland in the 17th century,
and later on the game really took hold in England. In his book, Fischler's
Illustrated History of Hockey, veteran hockey journalist and broadcaster
Stan Fischler writes about a rudimentary version of the sport becoming
popular in the English marshland community of Bury Fen in the 1820s.
The game, he explains, was called bandy, and the local players used to
scramble around the town's frozen meadowlands, swatting a wooden or cork
ball, known as a kit or cat, with wooden sticks made from the branches
of local willow trees. Articles in London newspapers around that time
mention increasing interest in the sport, which many observers believe
got its name from the French word hoquet, which means "shepherd's
crook" or "bent stick." A number of writers thought this
game should be forbidden because it was so disruptive to people out for
a leisurely winter skate.
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