Bandy is a team winter sport played on ice, in which skaters use sticks to direct a ball into the opposing team's goal.
Field hockey, known in most countries just as hockey, is a team game of the hockey family. The earliest origins of the game date back to the Middle Ages in Pakistan. The game can be played on grass, water turf, artificial turf or synthetic field as well as an indoor board surface. Each team plays with eleven players, including the goalie. Players use sticks made out of wood, carbon fibre, fibre glass or a combination of carbon fibre and fibre glass in different quantities to hit a round, hard, plastic ball. The length of the stick depends on the player's individual height. Only one face of the stick is allowed to be used. Goalies often have a different kind of stick, however they can also use an ordinary field hockey stick. The specific goal-keeping sticks have another curve at the end of the stick, this is to give them more surface area to save the ball. The uniform consists of shin guards, shoes, shorts, a mouth guard and a jersey.
Today, the game is played globally, mainly in parts of Western Europe, South Asia, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and parts of the United States.
Known simply as "hockey" in many territories, the term "field hockey" is used primarily in Canada and the United States where ice hockey is more popular. In Sweden, the term "landhockey" is used and to some degree also in Norway where it is governed by Norway's Bandy Association.
Hockey is a sport in which two teams play against each other by trying to manoeuvre a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick. There are many types of hockey such as bandy, field hockey, and ice hockey.
Ice hockey is a contact team sport played on ice, usually in a rink, in which two teams of skaters use their sticks to shoot a vulcanized rubber puck into their opponent's net to score points. The sport is known to be fast-paced and physical, with teams usually consisting of six players each: one goaltender, and five players who skate up and down the ice trying to take the puck and score a goal against the opposing team.
In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by intercepting shots at goal. Such positions exist in hurling, shinty, association football, Gaelic football, international rules football, handball, field hockey, bandy, rink bandy, rinkball, floorball, roller hockey, ice hockey, ringette, water polo, lacrosse, camogie and other sports.
Ball games, also ball sports, are any form of game or sport which feature a ball as part of play. These include games such as football, cricket, baseball, basketball, and American football. Such games have diverse rules and histories and are of mostly unrelated origins. Ball games can be defined in several broad types:
Street hockey (also known as dek hockey, ball hockey, is a variation of the sport of ice hockey where the game is played outdoors on foot, or with inline or roller skates using a ball or puck. Both ball and puck are typically designed to be played on non-ice surfaces. The object of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by shooting the ball or puck into the opposing team's net. Street hockey in pickup form is generally played under the following guidelines since there are no "official rules" for local pickup hockey:
Floor hockey is a family of indoor hockey games. 5 variations exist: three variations in the style of ice hockey, and the other two in the style of bandy, one of which is called floorball in English speaking regions.
Two of these variations involve the use of wheeled skates and are categorized as roller sports under the title of roller hockey. Quad hockey uses quad skates and looks similar to bandy, while inline hockey uses inline skates and is of the ice hockey variation.
All styles and codes are played on dry, flat floor surfaces such as a gymnasium or basketball court. As in other hockey codes, players on each team attempt to shoot a ball or puck into a goal using sticks, usually with a
curved end.
Floor hockey games differ from street hockey in that the games are more structured, and two use wheeled skates. The variations which do not involve wheeled skates are sometimes used for training children to play ice hockey and bandy in a training format known as dryland training.
Indoor hockey, is an indoor variant of outdoor "field" hockey. It is not to be confused with indoor roller hockey variants such as rink hockey or inline hockey.
Roller in-line hockey, or inline hockey is a variant of hockey played on a hard, smooth surface, with players using inline skates to move and hockey sticks to shoot a hard, plastic puck into their opponent's goal to score points. There are five players including the goalkeeper from each team on the rink at a time, while teams normally consist of 16 players.
Roller hockey, rink hockey or quad hockey is a team sport that enjoys significant popularity in a number of Latin countries.
Ball hockey is a team sport and a variation of the sport of ice hockey and a specific variation of the game of street hockey.
The Austrian Hockey League is the top-tier ice hockey league in Austria, although it currently features additional teams from Croatia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Italy.
The Austrian Roller Hockey National Championship is the biggest Roller Hockey Clubs Championship in Austria.
The 1980 Zimbabwe women's national field hockey team won the gold medal in women's field hockey at that year's Summer Olympics in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union. The squad of 16 women, all from Zimbabwe's white minority, was assembled less than a month before the Olympics began to help fill the gaps the American-led Olympic boycott created in the women's hockey competition. Zimbabwe's subsequent victory in the round-robin tournament with three wins and two draws was regarded as a huge upset, particularly considering the team's lack of preparation and experience; it has been called an "irresistible fairy story". Won at a time of great political transition in Zimbabwe, the gold medal was the country's first Olympic medal of any colour.
The 1996 Ball Hockey World Championship was the first ever Ball Hockey World Championship.
