Introduction
The ice hockey club is now in its eighth season as a sport available at Saint Ignatius. The program has grown in skill and numbers and now includes both junior varsity and varsity squads, and the team enters its first season in the Chicago Catholic Hockey League with our home ice at Johnny’s Ice House at 1350 West Madison. Johnny’s is only five minutes from Saint Ignatius, and all students are invited to attend our games. This season, the junior varsity team also plans to again compete in the Championship in the Catholic League playing all of its games at Southwest Ice Arena in Crestwood. Both teams’ schedules are posted below. The Wolves on Ice also intend to play exhibition games and will compete in an out-of-state tournament and others during the season.

History of Ice Hockey
According to the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia; “the history of ice hockey is one of the most contested in all of sports. The city of Montreal had been traditionally credited with being the birthplace of hockey, but early paintings contest this claim; 16th-century Dutch paintings show a number of townsfolk playing a hockey-like game on frozen canals.” In the 18th-century, English and French speaking Canadians strapped cheese cutters to their boots and played an early version of hockey during the long winters.

The first ever organized indoor game was played in Montreal on March 3, 1875. McGill University students became enthusiasts and developed the first formal rules in 1877. The famous Stanley Cup originated in 1888 when the governor general of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston thought there should be a trophy for the best team. One of Lord Stanley’s sons introduced the sport into the United States. Houghton, Michigan was the birthplace of professional ice hockey in this country when the Portage Lakers were formed in 1899. The National Hockey League (NHL) dates to November 1917.

Ice hockey is now one of the fastest growing women’s sports in the world reports Wikipedia. The number of participants has increased 400 percent in the past ten years. The Ignatius Hockey Club is pleased to have sophomore Moira Scanlon, one of the top young women players in the region as a member.

The sport is now played in many countries around the world and is among the most hotly contested events at the Winter Olympics. In 1980, the underdog United States team led by coach Herb Brooks defeated the mighty Soviet team in what has been called the “Miracle on Ice”. This victory launched amateur hockey on a new growth curve in the U.S.

Ice hockey is a unique sport requiring extraordinary skating ability coupled with great skill at the game. It is arguably the fastest of the non-mechanized, non-animal assisted sports. Hockey is also an extremely physical game requiring tremendous stamina, strength, speed and skill. Most players begin to develop their skating ability at a very young age, often before they are five years old. Hockey skills come later and include stick handling, passing, checking, positioning and team work. Although superstars exist at the professional level, ice hockey is truly a team sports building physical and mental skills in young men and women.