![]() ![]() The advantages that basketball and soccer have leveraged shine an important light on a bigger question than just participation in hockey: Canada is facing a bit of a sport participation crisis in general, and it's particularly notable with children under the age of 13. The world's most popular sport makes logical sense as the largest threat to the hockey-led status quo in the most diverse western country on the map. The emergence of Toronto FC as a rising powerhouse in Toronto should only foster that momentum, and while success has been somewhat delayed in the men's national program, the relatively infantile women's program has medaled in the last two Olympics. 1 team sport in terms of youth participation by a fairly significant margin. Soccer, which has similar advantages in terms of cost, has an even greater resonance with immigrant Canadians, and is already the No. ![]() Our 'new Canadians' have not grown up following, playing, or living with hockey and that's not likely to be any different in the next 25 or 50 years, I don't imagine." "I can absolutely see it continuing as it has been," says Toronto Star writer Doug Smith, who has been covering the Raptors since their inception. The effect is measurable in speculation only, but the converse has been fairly clear for one of hockey's primary competitors in the national sport landscape: basketball. If participation in hockey continues to decrease or stagnate, it could lead to more difficulty at the NHL or international level, and possibly further hamper enrollment. But hockey has fallen behind soccer and swimming in terms of youth participation, has also fallen behind basketball in immigrant youth participation (an important consideration given Canada's shifting demographics), and there are significant barriers to participation that need to be addressed (some of which Hockey Canada is hoping to tackle with several projects, including The Bauer First Shift initiative). ![]() It's a plateau more than a striking decrease. In Hockey Canada's 2015-16 annual report, registration numbers showed a modest decrease across the country, a reversal of course after a few years with a moderate trend upward, with 549,614 males and 86,925 females registered. We're looking at ways to attract kids to the game now that are very different than what sort of the regular mainstream participation in hockey is." "I would think that all sports are probably going through something similar. "I think going forward we're going to have to work even harder at attracting participants to the sport of hockey," Scott Smith, who is shifting from COO to president of Hockey Canada, told VICE Sports. Watch more from VICE Sports on the Godfather of Team India Ball Hockey But the country's 150th anniversary marks an interesting time to reflect and project, because the tides of Canadian sport interest and, more notably, participation, appear to be changing. The real answer as to what Canadian sport may look like in 150 years might be better predicted by Futurama than current data, considering how far things have come since 1867. To be clear, hockey is not going anywhere, and what follows is mostly an experiment in hypotheticals and over-extrapolations. Success in Olympic hockey, both men's and women's, is a Canadian priority."Īs we look ahead to what the next 150 years of sport may look like in this country, an interesting question emerges: Will that always be the case? "There may be a lot of hooey in this but there is also a lot of truth. "I believe, for better or for worse, that the Canadian self-image is inexorably tied to the main national sport, hockey: team-oriented, resourceful, determined, resilient, cooperative and, ultimately, triumphant," award-winning Canadian author Roy MacGregor told VICE Sports. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |