Of the boxes that are being filled in the places available for the qualifying tournaments for Paris 2024, that of the United States women’s field hockey team deserves a highlight.
Without a club structure similar to that of the main sports powers and it could even be said that in the shadow of the rich relative so popular in that country (the game on ice), North American girls have managed to remain with some regularity in the elite that frequently competes in the Olympic and world games of that sport.
It is true that they have had oscillations and their performance has not always been excellent. But they have achieved isolated victories against some of the main teams and have even surpassed Argentina in the Pan American finals, a nation that only needs to win the Olympic gold medal to cover all the boxes of its prestigious history in the specialty.
Part of the North American merit lies in the commitment they put in at the college level and, especially, at the university level. This phenomenon not only boosts the local team, but it is also extremely beneficial for foreign talents who aspire to study in tertiary schools in that country while continuing their sports career. There are cases in which, meeting academic and talent requirements for the game, young people from different parts of the world are able to receive scholarships in these study centers. In some cases, this implies no more or less than a saving of just under half a million dollars per year, equivalent to what the university process would cost a foreign student.
Beyond the virtues focused on the North American national team, two other more or less recent news are beginning to be looked at askance in certain areas of the game, mainly in relation to the link with Olympism.
It is known that the regulatory amendment concerned the duration of the match (it went from two periods of 35 minutes to four of 15) and had a lot to do with the need to give the game another dynamic to enhance seduction in the audiences. However, there are things that don’t work very well in this regard, for example the infinite number of interruptions, some of them unbearably extensive, to review plays in the decisive games of the recent Pan American games.
Just around those days, the IOC announced that lacrosse will be one of the five sports that will join the Los Angeles 2028 program. You don’t have to go too deep to assume the similarities between the two games. Nor in the roots that lacrosse has in student communities in the United States.
Finally, the confirmation of the holding of the Hockey 5 World Cup fuels the suggestions of those who imagine an Olympic destination similar to that of rugby for hockey: ending up playing a reduced version.
Of course, it doesn’t make sense to be an alarmist. At the moment, no one has said anything that would change the status quo of this game with Olympism. In any case, it didn’t hurt anyone to be alert and improve everything that enhances the attractiveness of this sport.
In addition to lacrosse and hockey 5, let’s hope the traditional hockey of 11 is not left out of the map. It is a discipline with enormous roots in the universe of the rings. And in more than one country, the overall specialty most popular among ladies.
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