While there are no physical advantages related to a player’s size when playing hockey, it is generally acknowledged that a player who has good anaerobic endurance and who has exceptional hand-eye coordination will excel. It is not uncommon for a player to run more than 5 miles at top pace during the course of an elite level game of hockey. While covering that much ground may seem fairly simple, consider that a hockey player will also be controlling a small ball with a J-shaped stick for much of that time.
Hockey is a game of extraordinary skill, having to trap a ball hit at you at great pace with a flat piece of wood and then to keep that ball out of the clutches of the opposition. It also requires a playing surface that is even and reliable. Until around the 1970s all hockey was played on natural grass, a surface that varied greatly in quality and evenness. This greatly affected the way the game was played as well as the speed at which it was possible to play.
These days top level hockey is played on synthetic turf pitches which has greatly increased the speed at which it is played. It has also changed the equipment that is used to play the game. Hockey sticks have been altered to a stick that is more suited to the artificial surface and the shoes that players wear also had to be altered. Tactics and dribbling techniques also changed to more effectively make use of the predictable surface.
Hockey is governed by the Federation of International Hockey (FIH) and there are 14 principal rules to the game that cover every situation that arises during a game. These rules are standard throughout the world for all competition hockey, although there may be some alterations made to cater for the very young hockey players.
Hockey is one of the few international sports where the number of female participants is increasing compared to those of males. This Olympic sport is played in a large number of countries around the world, but it seems that women’s hockey is where the real growth is taking place. That’s not to say that men’s hockey is in the doldrums, it just seems to be that women’s hockey has been able to capture the imagination and interest of young women looking to take up a new and exciting sport.