What is your idea of a Ladies' Hockey Player?

[oggbashan]

Whoops. I thought you meant ice hockey too.....never played land hockey. *restrains an ick* You probably wouldn't have liked all the padding we wore... but it was a co-ed team, so shower time was interesting.

Whisp

In the UK hockey on land is played at girls' schools - viciously with no quarter asked or given.

Girls' school stories of the 1920s and 1930s mirrored the boys' school stories except that the captain of the hockey team was the heroine of the school (boys - cricket captain) US equivalent would be leading footballer or baseball champion.

Hockey girls were supposed to be not interested in SEX and apparently had never heard of it. They were hearty, hefty and dangerous. A boy who dared accost one would be hit with a hockey stick where it hurt. Hockey girls would foil burglars, stop bank raids, foil German spies and SAVE THE SCHOOL.

Poet Laureate John Betjeman wrote poems about such girls and married one. The hockey players have been trying to live down that image ever since.

Locally it is a popular sport with players from my town representing England in international events. Men and women play hockey. I wouldn't like to say which play harder (or dirtier). A schoolboy team would usually be beaten by a schoolgirl team because the boys would not play as roughly as they would normally. The girls wouldn't change their tactics and the boys would get hurt. That changes in adulthood. A good mens' team would beat a good womens' team because of greater strength and size.

The picture in my first post was specially posed to try to dispel the idea that women hockey players are ugly, with broken noses and muscles like gorillas. It was issued by the womens' hockey organisation because their image is still poor - unlike women football (soccer) players who are followed by enthusiastic men.

That they had to issue such a picture shows that Englishmen still have a long way to go in appreciating sportswomen as 'normal' people.

If, like me, they have actually met women hockey players, the contrast between the 1930s myth and the current reality is an eye-opener. Apart from being attractive because they are so fit, the ones I met had a wicked sense of humour and far from being the feminine equivalent of the brainless sports jock they were intelligent and significant achievers in other aspects of life.

I loved them.

Og