Sport Trivia

Games between teams hitting an object with curved sticks have been played throughout history; 4000 year-old drawings at the Beni-Hasen tombs in Egypt depict a sport resembling field hockey. The 1527 Galway Statutes in Ireland made reference to "the horlinge of the litill balle with hockie stickes or staves." The etymology of the word hockey is uncertain. It may derive from the Old French word hoquet, shepherd's crook, or from the Middle Dutch word hokkie, meaning shack or doghouse, which in popular use meant goal. Many of these games were developed for fields, though where conditions allowed they were also played on ice. 16th-century Dutch paintings show townsfolk playing a hockey-like game on a frozen canal.