Field Hockey

Field hockey, also known simply as hockey, is one of the most popular spectator sports in the world, particularly in Commonwealth countries and Asia. Related to other stick and ball games, such as ice hockey and cricket, field hockey is a team sport wherein players compete to guide a ball into the opposing team's goal using curved field hockey sticks. Originally played on natural fields, with rules written by cricket clubs as a sport for them to play in the off-season, it is now usually played on artificial turf in order to provide a surface that is more consistent from location to location. The International Hockey Federation is the governing body for the sport.

Unlike many sports, the game has no fixed player positions; even the goalkeeper is an optional position. As a result, teams are given a lot of flexibility in how they choose to arrange their players on the field. Because play is fluid and ongoing (stopping only when there is a penalty or the ball leaves the field) and players are not confined to a specific zone of the field, individual players also have flexibility in the roles they occupy during the game.

Like soccer and cricket, field hockey is considerably more popular outside the United States. What is unique about the sport in the United States is that in American sports it is widely treated as a women's sport, despite originating as a men's sport (unlike softball or netball, which were offered as women's alternatives to men's programs of baseball and basketball).

Origins and History

Stick and ball games, the ancestors of games like hockey and bandy, have been played for thousands of years throughout much of the world. The basic form of field hockey can be reduced to several elements: the use of bent sticks to manipulate a ball across a field, a game played between two teams, and the overall objective to guide the ball into the opposing team's guarded goal area. This basic proto-hockey game has been found in many civilizations throughout the world, including ancient Ireland, India, the Noongar people of Western Australia, the Vikings of Iceland, the Daur people of Inner Mongolia, ancient Egypt, and ancient Greece. As with many such sports, it is difficult to pinpoint the origin of field hockey at a specific point in time. Even the origins of the English word hockey are unclear.

What can be more confidently traced is the history of the rules and organization of the modern sport, which grew out of nineteenth-century English public schools. Like many nineteenth-century English sports, the rise and formalization of field hockey was propelled by the desire of sports clubs to occupy themselves with an alternate sport in the off-season. In this case, cricket clubs not drawn to association football (soccer, as it's known in the United States) adapted the hockey game to one they could play on their cricket pitches. The first formal rules for field hockey (called simply "hockey" at the time) were drawn up between 1874 and 1875 by the Teddington Hockey Club, which had been founded in 1871 at Teddington School. In addition to establishing the basic dimensions of the hockey field, the Teddington rules stipulated the existence of the goal circle from which shots must take place and banned raising the field hockey stick above shoulder height.

A hockey association of multiple clubs was formed in 1886, popularizing the Teddington forms of many of the rules and rejecting alternate forms that had been developed by other clubs, such as the use of a rubber cube rather than the modern rubber ball that was adopted instead. As with cricket, the popularity of the sport in the British military spread it throughout the British Empire, and the first international competition was held in 1895, only twenty years after the first rules had been written. Men's field hockey was added as an Olympic game in 1908 (women's field hockey followed in 1980) and has been present in all but two games since (1912 and 1924).

The Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon (FIH), also known as the International Hockey Federation (FIH) was founded in 1924 by Paul Léautey of France. The original international governing body consisted of Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Spain, and Switzerland. The International Federation of Women’s Hockey Associations (IFWHA) was formed three years later, in 1927. The inaugural Men's World Cup took place in Barcelona, Spain, in 1971, and the inaugural Women's World Cup took place in 1974 in Mandelieu, France.

Rules and Regulations

Field hockey is played between two teams of eleven players each (not counting substitutes). The game is played by each team attempting to strike the ball, using field hockey sticks, into the opposing team's goal. Hands and feet may not be used to touch the ball. Unlike in soccer or many other sports, there are no formally defined positions other than that of goalkeeper, but it is not actually mandatory for a team to play a goalkeeper; however, there are specific goalkeeper privileges and protective equipment reserved for that position.

The field hockey stick was traditionally made of wood but may also be made of composite materials. Most weigh just under 1.5 pounds (0.68 kilograms) and are between 35 and 38 inches long (89 to 97 centimeters), with a maximum length of 41 inches (104 centimeters). The striking end of the stick, called the head, is curved and is flat on one side (the face) and rounded on the other. The ball must be struck with the face side of the stick (or, in a later rules addition, with the edge); sticks must be held so that the flat side swings toward the ball for a right-handed person, even if the player is left-handed. Players may not shove or obstruct one another with their body or stick, kick the ball, or raise the stick above shoulder height. Many of these rules are meant to keep the game safe because of the speed of play.

The hockey field or pitch is mandated at a fixed 100 by 60.1 yards (91 by 55 meters), with a goal 7 feet high and 12 feet wide (2 meters high and 3.6 meters wide). Lines mark the center, end lines, and penalty spot (where penalty shots are taken). In international tournaments and most national competitions, artificial turf fields are now required, having been developed in the 1970s. Outside of school and college play, most hockey fields have been replaced with artificial turf, usually sand-dressed or sand-filled.

The game is played for four 15-minute periods in most countries and leagues, and two 35-minute halves in others. Various violations of the rules result in the opposing team being awarded a penalty shot, in which they are allowed an attempt at a goal from the back line, while five defenders defend the goal.

Strategy and Tactics

Unlike soccer, football, or many other sports, there are no strictly defined position players in field hockey, apart from the optional goalkeeper. Much of field hockey strategy flows from this fact. The first choice any team makes deals with its goalkeeping strategy, in which it is allowed three options: to play a goalkeeper, who wears a differently colored shirt to designate the position and special protective equipment, enjoying goalkeeping privileges; to designate a field player as a player with goalkeeping privileges, in which case they have freedom to leave the defending area but only have goalkeeping privileges within that area and wear only limited protective gear; or to play no goalkeeper at all, in which case the goal is defended only in the sense that ordinary players use defensive strategies to try to prevent the ball from reaching the goal.

Furthermore, because players are not assigned to specific positions, all nongoalkeeping players have the same privileges and freedom of movement. This allows for more fluidity and flexibility, both on the part of the individual player and at the level of team strategy. Though general positionality has evolved in line with other sports—offense players whose job is to attempt goals, defenders who guard the field beyond the goalkeeper's area, and midfielders who intercept the ball from the other team and pass it to their own offense—in many cases these descriptions apply to the roles and duties of a player according to where they are in the field at a given moment during play, rather than in the sense of a given player identifying as a midfielder at all times. This is particularly true of Australian field hockey, which emphasizes positional fluidity, and the success of Australia in international field hockey events has influenced the way the sport is played in other countries.

Professional Leagues and Series

Field hockey is governed by the Federation Internationale de Hockey (FIH) or International Hockey Federation, established in Paris in 1924, initially to work toward the goal of including field hockey in the Olympics. It has been headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, since 2005. The FIH consists of 146 national associations in five regional confederations: the African Hockey Federation, the Asian Hockey Federation, the European Hockey Federation, the Oceania Hockey Federation, and the Pan American Hockey Federation.

The FIH organizes several competitions, chief among them the Hockey World Cup, held every four years among national teams and historically dominated by India, Pakistan, the Netherlands, and Australia. There are also the Women's Hockey World Cup, and Men's and Women's Junior Hockey World Cups for competitors under the age of twenty-one. The FIH also organizes the FIH Hockey World League every two years, a four-round tournament that functions as the qualifier for both the World Cup and the Olympics. The World Cup and the Olympics are the preeminent tournaments in field hockey. Field hockey is also an event at the Commonwealth Games, held every four years among members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and at similar international regional events such as the All-Africa Games and the Asian Games.

The number of teams competing in the World Cup has varied from ten to sixteen, and the FIH has imposed no specific requirements governing the size of the tournament. Of the 146 associations participating in the FIH, twenty-seven have qualified for the World Cup in at least one year, while eight teams have made it to the finals at least once. No team from the Americas or Africa has performed better than third place, nor has any Asian team outside the Indian subcontinent. While the winners have been relatively consistent, overall participation has been diverse, with teams representing Belarus, Cuba, Italy, Ghana, and Japan all playing in at least one World Cup along with teams from more historically dominant nations. India, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain have qualified at every World Cup since its inception.

Historically, India and Pakistan have largely dominated field hockey at the Olympics, though the Netherlands took the gold in 1996, 2000, and 2024 and Germany took the gold in 1992, 2008, and 2012. In back-to-back rare occurences, Argentina won the gold in 2016 and Belgium won the gold in 2020. Thirty-nine countries overall have competed in field hockey at the Olympics, including Spain, which has the most Olympic appearances of any country that has not won the gold medal. Olympic participation was invitation through 1988, but the FIH has used a qualification system from the 1992 Olympics onward (the Hockey World League has served as this system since 2012).

Popularity

Worldwide, field hockey is the most popular sport in the world to lack a significant professional league. Due to its popularity in Commonwealth countries and Asia, only soccer, cricket, and possibly tennis enjoy higher numbers of spectators; all of these sports have many highly paid professional players, while hockey tends to be associated with national and college teams.

There are no professional field hockey leagues in the United States, where it remains a minor sport even at the college level; fewer than three hundred schools sponsor varsity field hockey teams, compared to more than two thousand basketball teams and more than five hundred lacrosse teams. Among team sports, only ice hockey, rowing, water polo, beach volleyball, and ultimate Frisbee are less represented.

Field hockey is one of the few sports in the United States that is significantly more popular among women than men, and unlike softball (or netball in Commonwealth countries), it did not originate as the "women's sport" analogue of a men's sport. The NCAA Division I Field Hockey championship for women's teams has been held since 1981; there is no men's championship. It was one of twelve women's sports added to the NCAA's championship program that year as the association expanded its governance of women's collegiate sports. The championship has historically been dominated by the Old Dominion Lady Monarchs, who by 2024 had won nine titles, and the North Carolina Tarheels, who had won eleven titles by 2024.

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