|
|
V° Trofeo Altea |
WHEN AND WHERE ICE HOCKEY WAS BORN
Derived from field-hockey, ICE HOCKEY is a
typical winter sport, not only very popular in Canada and the States, but also
in all the center-eastern part of Europe and in Scandinavia. From the very
beginning in England, Ice Hockey attained to its technical maturity and won
people's fancy, thanks to the Canadan League that studied it and fixed the
rules for this game. Ice Hockey spread through Europe during the last decade
of the XIX century; between 1908-1910 the first European championship was
played and the Bohemian team was the winner. In Italy, Ice Hockey appeared for
the first time in 1911 in Torino, thanks to the "Circolo Pattinatori del
Valentino", but it started a noteworthy activity only in 1924 with the
opening of the first artificial rink in the Ice Stadium of Via Piranesi, in
Milan, which is still working, even though there are no more hockey teams
playing there.
WOMEN'S FIRST TIME
Ice Hockey practice, which had been a men's prerogative
for a long time, caught on the girls only few years ago. Female Ice
Hockey in Italy is a rather young reality, a little more than a decade old,
and the H.C. Lario Halloween - Altea, founded in the first months of the year
1987, was one of the first teams to practise this sport, that was played just
for pleasure. Nowadays Female Ice Hockey does exist and our Italian National
Team has just achieved the qualifying event for the World Ice Hockey
Championship in March 2000.
HOW AND WHERE THIS SPORT IS PRACTISED
Each team is made up of a maximum of 20 players plus 2
goalies. During the match both the teams draw up six players on the ice: a
goalkeeper, two defensemen (well,..."defensewomen" in this case!)
and three forwards. All of them can be freely substituted; all but the goalie,
who needs an explicit permission of the three referees. The umpire is assisted
by two linesmen, all of them are on the ice. The penalties are included in the
played time and are divided in: minor penalty, major penalty, misconduct
penalty and Match Penalty.
The referee signals the penalties with fixed gesture.
The "punished" players are sent to penalty boxes ( one for each
team), on the opposite side of the rink. The rink is divided into 3 equal
parts: between the two red lines near the cages (goal lines) there are two
blue lines that extend across the ice, 60 feet from each of the goals, and a center
line, a red stripe that extends midway between the two goals. The game starts,
at the beginning of each period, and after each goal scored, from the central
face-off point, but there are 8 more face-off points, from which the puck is
dropped by the referee in order to resume a game.
The Female A-team and B-team must wear all the
protective equipment, especially the helmet with the shield. Boarding is not
legal, even though body check is part of the game.
|
write to hc.lariohalloween@tiscalinet.it send
a web message with questions or comments on this Web site.
|
