Although I recently learned that lacrosse is Canada’s official summer sport, everybody knows that Canada’s true national sport (but official only in winter, apparently) is hockey. We supply more NHLers than any other country and have the most developed youth hockey leagues. Canadians actually watch the world juniors and there’s no doubt that we’re fiercely proud of our skating heroes.
But to keep the hockey dreams on ice children need to keep playing hockey, a proposition that can be both expensive and time consuming. There’s only so much ice and the equipment isn’t a minor investment. The projections are for hockey enrollment to decline.
All of this has led one parent to come out and declare – shock! – she simply doesn’t want to be a hockey mom.
With soccer becoming so popular – not to mention far cheaper and more likely to see kids keep their teeth – it gets harder and harder for parents to commit to the long hours and high cost of our national pastime.
That won’t keep loads of schools from offering hockey (just type “hockey” as a search term and you get many hits!), but the future of Canada’s hockey program looks a bit less certain to me than I would expect.
Photo by dragyre on flickr.
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