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Junior Ice Hockey

The Physically Demanding Sport of

Hockey is one of the most physically demanding games known to man. This intense sport requires that a skater have as much strategy and skill as football or baseball player in addition to the strength that only a conditioned athlete can bring to the ice, and a kind of ferocity that is a rare quality indeed. Hockey players must tolerate quite a bit of pain and discomfort, and serious players must be able and willing to participate in very heavy training all through the year to remain competitive. Unlike many sports that primarily require endurance, Hockey is all about sudden short bursts of extremely intense activity. This makes hockey a very different kind of physical challenge than a sport like soccer where movement is lower-intensity but continuous.
A hockey player must be able to rev their personal engine from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds. At the pro level, a hockey player rarely spends more than a full minute at a time actively skating on the ice. Between those brief flurries of almost manic activity, a player can recover and catch his or her breath, but must remain alert and in readiness for the next explosion of action on the ice. Suddenly jumping from a fairly passive and relaxed state to the height of speed and power isn't easy. The discipline and talent a hockey player must posses in order to do this well are often a large part of what separates the amateurs from the professionals.

The need to be able to swiftly transition from a state of rest to one of peak activity requires specific forms of training that focus on shortening response times and achieving graceful and efficient movement without much of a warm up. A hockey skater's workout regimen contains many predictable activities like lifting weights and jogging, but one place where many players go in order to improve their agility and response time proves to be somewhat surprising to many sports fans.

Although classical music and pink tulle are the last things most people associate with the rough and tumble sport of hockey, many players train at ballet studios. From young boys and girls who are in amateur leagues all the way up to Olympic-level hockey players, spending time refining plies at the ballet barre often proves to give skaters a leg up on the ice.

From dance studios to weight rooms to jogging tracks, a hockey player must train his or her body in a variety of ways to prepare for what many consider the most physically demanding of all sports. Between the strenuous flurries of activity, the psychological stress of performance, the lack of warm up time, and the bulky padding of a hockey uniform, a player at the top level of competitive hockey may sweat away up to eight pounds of water weight during the course of a single game. There is no other sport where this kind of drastic weight loss due to exertion happens so quickly. A hockey player's body must be prepared to safely weather this kind of ordeal on a regular basis, which requires a level of physical fitness that few other sports require.

About the Author

Read about yoshino cherry and wild cherry tree at the Types Of Cherry Trees website.

College Sports Scholarships Awarded In 34 Sports From Archery To Ice Hockey, Cross Country To Squash, Basketball To Volleyball

 

If you have athletic ability and good grades you are a candidate for a sports scholarship. You might be surprised to know that there are 34 sports played at the college level that are scholarship sports. You probably can't list them all!

Each of these 34 sports have scholarship possibilities, but not all colleges offer or award scholarships in every sport. The institutions themselves decide which sports to sponsor. Additionally, while many college sports programs offer teams for both genders, other sports are only available for men or women. Getting confused? Well, here's the list:

Archery                        Football                    Skiing, downhill  

Badminton                    Golf                          Squash

Baseball                       Gymnastics               Soccer   

Basketball                    Handball                    Softball

Bowling                        Ice Hockey                Swimming

Cheerleading                Indoor Track               Synchonized Swimming

Cross Country               Lacrosse                   Tennis

Diving                           Riflery                       Track & Field

Equestrian                    Rodeo                        Volleyball

Fencing                        Rowing                      Water Polo

Field Hockey                Rugby                        Wrestling

                                    Skiing, x country         

What is interesting is that many young people grow up thinking that college sports are about basketball or baseball or football. They see these sports on national television and or read about them in newspapers or on sports websites. The truth is there are so many other sports they can play. Some savvy young athletes look at the list and decide to change sports to one they might excel in at the college level.

An example is a high school runner. She was above average in her school and in the league. But, she became interested in pole-vaulting when it was still fairly new for high school females. She was recruited by several college coaches for her pole-vaulting skills, not her running. She went to a great college on a track scholarship in pole-vaulting.

Another young high school athlete was a skilled soccer player. She was highly rated but not one of the top 3 or 4 in her area. She switched to rowing in her junior year and excelled. She also received a scholarship... not in her earlier sport...but in rowing.

Being realistic is beneficial when thinking about playing a college sport. If a student-athlete experiences several sports along the way, including ones that don't get much attention in the press, but are college sports, nonetheless, he or she might find that fencing or riflery or rowing is a better fit than the media favorites...and they might pay scholarship dollars, too.

 

About the Author

Journalist, publisher, author Penny Hastings lives in Santa Rosa, California, and is the co-author of "How To Win A Sports Scholarship" and author of Sports For Her: A Reference Guide for Teenage Girls. She has written numerous articles for newspapers and magazines. She is the owner/publisher of Redwood Creek Publishing. www.winasportsscholarship.com

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