Interviews from the players and sounds of the game. Show notes include lots of links to other coverage, including my own.
floorball
Last night was the third night of floorball at Mulgrave School in West Vancouver, where as usual we had 20 minutes of drills and warmup and played what seemed like an unending game. I got one or two assists, depending on how you define assist. (Is it like hockey where if you set up the guy who gets the first assist, you also get an assist?) I didn't score, but came close 3 times, and was really happy about the chances, as I had just the right amount of patience and was open for just long enough to turn around and take a shot. The first shot went off the cross-bar (almost perfect placement!) and another sailed past the post.
(Last week, just to keep track, I scored a goal and got one assist.)
Last night floorball started back up again at Mulgrave School in West Vancouver, this time with a twist on the original drop-ins I was participating in earlier in the year. Now they have full session sign-ups, and each drop-in begins with 15-20 minutes of drills. Perfect! I'm still a floorball newbie, and having some practice time with long-time players watching over should add some polish to my very rough floor hockey edges. Starting with last night's games' two goals and one assist, I'm keeping track of my points so that I can look back and see how I did over a "season".
The BC Floorball Federation is also organizing a Vancouver floorball league, which declared its opening night's success. They're also organizing a youth floorball program for 12-14 year olds so that they can learn the basics of the game at a time when they're just starting to get serious about sports. Congratulations are due to the BC Floorball Federation on the growth of the sport in the Lower Mainland: as far as I can tell, they're very serious about using all the tools to market the sport to British Columbians, using newspapers and online social networking tools like blogging (all the links here are to their blog) and other applications like Facebook.
While on the bus going towards work, I saw the poster in the window.
Readers of Urban Vancouver know that I've been playing floorball, a type of floor hockey with modifications like shorter sticks with golf club-like grips, a whiffle ball, with rules that emphasize stickhandling and playmaking over physical toughness. I'd only heard about the sport a few months ago, but the people are really friendly and encouraging, and though play is a little more 'lower-body' than I anticipated, it's a nice compliment to the primarily 'upper-body' sport of dragon boating.
After the BC Federation Floorball challenge a few weeks ago, I was getting a little discouraged with goal-scoring, but after last night's play, scoring on the final play of the final game, and feeling a lot better about my defensive play, I've gotten over any doubts I might have had about enjoying floorball. One of the organizers noticed an increase in velocity on my shot—though we'll see how accurate I am under pressure—and going the almost the whole night without water makes me wonder if my fluid intake is way more than it needs to be.
The 1st annual BC Floorball Federation Challenge this past Saturday was a major success! I was placed on Team Sweden, and despite claims of coincidence, I suspect conspiracy—I started participating in order to counter Swedish dominance with a surging Icelandic wave, and this is how they repay me?! Team Czech won the championship, which lasted all day at Mulgrave School in West Vancouver. Separate from the challenge, Swiss all-stars continued their dominance over the Canadian team in the middle of the day, and kids entertained the adults who deservedly rested after some pretty intense action. Each team had only one or two substitutes, making for some tired legs at the end of each game, but I scored twice and assisted once, so I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. Team Sweden lost twice, tied once, and won their final game.
Stewart already addressed the issue I had about floorball, that is that tricks have more value than fundamentals. This is true of all sports, really, but it's also true that teams that best exploit the regime (the infrastructure of the sport, including the rules and how the refs call it) are the ones that dominate, not necessarily those that are the most skillful. Think the New Jersey Devils of hockey and the Detroit Pistons of basketball. But practicing tricks makes you better at the fundamentals: in basketball, getting better control of the ball involves playing around with what you can do, and the same goes with floorball. The more you're able to control the ball the more you're able to go around people and put it in the net.
Basketball is the sport I have most knowledge in, having played it most of my life. I'm relying on my basketball positioning in floorball, to possibly humourous effect. In basketball, when the defensive team gets the ball, if I'm not inside the key, my first instinct is to go towards the sidelines for the outlet pass. Same with floorball, but I'm learning to go from sidelines and cut to the middle if I can see that someone particularly skilled at passing has the ball. Also, I'm used to standing in front of the net in basketball, using my size to intimidate the offense. In floorball, this isn't necessarily ideal, since the goalie might not be able to see the ball as it's shot. I need to train myself to either not fear the shot and block it, or make a lane so that I'm not an unwitting screen. Another thing borrowed directly from basketball is to not cross my legs when the offensive player is in front of me while on defense. Instead, shuffling my feet from side to side may be a little slower, but at least makes it harder for the player coming on me to turn me around.
Things I've picked up watching other players: on defense while an offensive player is behind the net, their temptation is to come right out and wrap it around. As a counter-measure, I've been cutting off that angle. Another positioning moved I picked up in observation is to use my feet, placed one in front of each other and then putting my stick in front of both, forcing the player to thread the needle between my legs if they want to make a pass. This instead of facing the player directly, which makes a bigger five-hole.
As promised, some video of floorball in action. Izzard's video gives you a sense of what it's like to play pickup floorball in a gym, except we don't play to a Chemical Brothers soundtrack. For tricks (which floorballers seem to prefer to call skills), go no further than video showing the "Zorro" performed during games. I'm not so fond of the tricks, they intimidate me as a beginner, and besides, I won the award for best fundamentals on my basketball team (that's also why Tim Duncan has long been a favourite player of mine). For a good introduction to some of the rules, GlobalTV Quebec's This Morning Live did a short series one day on the sport, calling it "Floorball Fun With Richard" (hey I should have thought of that!): part 1; part 2; and part 3.
Thanks to the fine folks at BC Floorball for the link back to yesterday's introduction to the series. Referring to me, they say "as soon as he realised Sweden is a top nation in Floorball he knew he HAD to play. Nothing like a bit of Nordic rivalry!" That's right, it took not Stewart's gentle pleas to get me to try the sport, but rather looking at the Wikipedia page for floorball and noticing that the Swedish men have won all the world championships to get my Icelandic blood boiling.
