We are a hockey nation, but it seems more young boys and girls are picking up a stick of a different style to play a sport billed as a great crossover from hockey and ringette.

Field hockey in Red Deer appears to be gaining some traction with the younger crowd.

“It was around a long time ago and then there was no field hockey for a long time and about five years ago we restarted with our first U-14 team,” said Heidi Olstad, a community coach with Red Deer Field Hockey.

For the first few years the sport doubled its number of players and now it’s starting to stabilize with kids aged seven to 17 playing the game, she said.

Field hockey in Red Deer is now represented by teams in the U10, U12, U14, U16 and U18 divisions and there was so interest last month when the association held a try it for free night at the Collicutt Centre. It was a chance to give the sport a try before registering for the 2018 season if they want to carry it further than just an experiment.

“I never liked sports before until I tried field hockey,” said Olstad. “Then that was it. I loved field hockey and then I did track and then I loved soccer and played lots of sports but until I played field hockey I had no interest in sports.”

The younger teams, up to the U14 level are co-ed and the girls make up the U16 and U18 squads. Olstad says if there is enough interest at some point a boy’s teams could be formed at one of those levels.

The athletes who showed up on this night were given the Reader’s Digest version of filed hockey with the goal at the end of the night to have given them a taste of the game. After that, they can decide if field hockey is for them.

Eleven players make up a team and the game is like other sports with regard to, but field hockey does have some rules unique to itself.

“There is no offside and you have to be within a “D” (a marked area around the goal) to score,” said Olstad. “You’re not allowed to let the ball touch anything but one side of the stick and with the younger kids we don’t allow them to raise the ball but as they get older it can be done safely and they are allowed a little bit more.”

The non-contact sport has only right-handed sticks but Olstad says there are plenty of lefties playing the game. She says they basically have a good back-hand shot and it doesn’t appear to hold them back from playing the game at a high level.

The season in Red Deer covers the months of May and June with one practice a week indoors and one outdoors.

For more information you can contact http://fieldhockey.ab.ca/leagues-competitions/red-deer/.