Hockey

             The game of hockey has been around for a long time. It is unknown when and where the game originated from, but we do know how it got started. The game has grown and changed over the years, and is now played all over the world. It has become one of the most popular winter sports on earth. .
             Most people believe that hockey began northern Europe, specifically Great Britain and France, where field hockey was a popular summer sport more than five hundred years ago. During the winter when the lakes and ponds became frozen, many of the athletes playing field hockey took the game to the ice. The ice game known as kolven was popular in Holland in the seventeenth century and the game became really popular in England. The ice game was also called bandy, and players would run around the frozen pond hitting a wooden or cork ball, known as a kit or cat, with wooden sticks made out of branches from willow trees. The sport became increasingly popular, and got its name from the French word hoquet, which means "shepard's crook" or "bent stick." .
             The sport got so popular in Europe that it spread to North America. The earliest North American games were played in Canada. During the 1870's students from Montreal's Mcgill University began playing ice hockey against each other. This led to the first ice hockey league in Kingston, Ontario, in 1885 and consisted of four teams. Hockey became so popular that games were soon being played on a regular basis in Canada. The English Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston, was so impressed by the sport that he bought a silver trophy and declared that the best team would win this trophy. Eventually this trophy became known as the Stanley Cup, which is awarded to the best team in the NHL (National Hockey League). .
             When people first began playing hockey, they wore little equipment. The past hockey players had skates that consisted of blades, which were attached to shoes and sticks were made from tree branches.