DES MOINES, Wash. — An introduction to hockey for third-graders here began with soliciting ideas on what they shouldn’t do with their stick.
“It’s not a baseball bat,” one girl replied.
A boy chimed in: “Don’t hit other people with it.”
Once the part about not using a hockey stick to attack or maim was drilled home for the 8- and 9-year-olds, NHL Seattle community engagement director Kyle Boyd began his first lesson on what they should do with it. Safety is a big part of the twice-weekly “floorball” classes Boyd has started integrating as a pilot program within Seattle and Highline district schools — providing first-time exposure to the sport without the additional distractions of ice, body-checking, heavy sticks and pucks and other perils that occasionally turn young people away from hockey before they ever get started.
The NHL is especially keen on having floorball and street hockey programs brought by its member teams to markets typically underserved by the sport’s youth programs.
Hockey for decades was known as a sport largely for white people in the northern U.S. and Canada because nontraditional communities lacked ice rinks and exposure to skills at an early level. The expense of fully outfitting youth players for hockey also dissuades families, which floorball renders a nonissue because it can be played year-round on gym floors without much equipment.
The NHL’s Black Hockey History Tour, a curated mobile museum that arrives in Seattle this Saturday for a North American high four days of stops around the region, aims to expose hockey to as diverse a range of people as possible. The NHL touts a slogan — “Hockey is for everyone” — that represents its belief that getting more players of color and from other nontraditional hockey communities involved in the game is a key to the sport’s fandom and professional survival for decades to come.
The Dallas Stars were among the first to incorporate floorball within their outreach program, joined later by the New York Islanders, Florida Panthers and New Jersey Devils. And now, Boyd is in the initial stages of doing the same on behalf of NHL Seattle, preaching basic skills development this week to groups of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Des Moines Elementary — whose pupils come from precisely the backgrounds he’s hoping to expose the sport to.
Boyd showed students how to hold the lightweight floorball sticks and control and dribble the official ball made of hard plastic but containing 26 evenly distributed holes, similar to a Wiffle ball.
“If you have your hands spread out a little bit, it will be a little easier to keep control,” he told the third-graders as they practiced stickhandling.
Some got the hang of it right away and dribbled the ball more than 100 times without losing control. Others, prone to the novice mistake of holding the stick near its top end with two hands close together, struggled to maintain a dozen dribbles before Boyd intervened.
Later, they took turns trying breakaways on nets with a fabric stretched across with a goalie design on it. The fabric had selected openings in it for the kids to try to score on, and several of them did.
“I see we’ve got our goal celebrations down already,” Boyd said after one particularly exuberant third-grader put the ball through the opening.
After this week’s classes, Boyd returns for two more next week — focused on shooting, passing and hopefully some 3-on-3, 4-on-4 and 5-on-5 games between students.
The rules of floorball — an actual competitive sport that’s part of the World Games after being invented in 1960s Sweden — maintain that sticks, shots and ball handling be kept below the waist at times, with no body contact, stick-on-stick contact, blocking or screening opponents, nor hitting or lifting of sticks.
“Hockey is a lot of fun, so we were happy the kids are getting the chance to try it,” said John Rhodes, a physical education teacher at the school. “And it’s good that we’re not on the ice at this point because that’s a whole lot of other skill.”
Rhodes said he recently saw one of his fifth-graders play in a local hockey league and came away impressed by his skill. But for the most part, he added, the majority of his students had never even held a stick before Boyd’s visit.
There is a local ice rink in Kent, about a 10-minute drive from the school, and Rhodes hopes that by learning the basics of stickhandling and shooting, at least some of the students will want to try the sport’s on-ice version.
Boyd hopes for the same thing. He grew up in Minneapolis, the son of the Minnesota Wild’s onetime team doctor, but was often the only black player on his youth teams.
Once the floorball classes graduate from a pilot project to a part of a school’s curriculum, teachers will be allowed to keep the sticks, nets and balls for future use.
“We want to give as many kids as we can the chance to try hockey,” he said. “We know that when they do, they’re going to love it.”