While hockey is generally considered to be a sport, in Florida, it goes unnoticed. Ice Hockey has easily escaped the public interest in Florida. I’d wager most Floridians would fail to name a single Florida hockey team if asked, and might not even know the location of one. In Florida, hockey is a game, not a sport.

Webster’s Dictionary has two consistent definitions of the word sport, the first being a pleasurable pastime. While to some hockey is a pleasurable pastime, so is collecting stamps or coins. Under this definition, a children’s game of tag could be defined as a sport, but surely most consider it to be just a game. Hockey is the same as tag in this respect.

I do not deny that hockey is a pleasurable pastime; I contend that this definition of sport does not capture the essence of true sports like Soccer, but rather is a generalization. Categorizing according to this definition would be akin to categorizing the population of earth under the single term of people: too simplistic to be practical.

The second definition describes a sport as an activity with “a set form and body of rules.” Technically, under this definition, hockey is in fact a sport.

Junior Devonte’ Richardson supports that hockey is just a game. To Richardson hockey is “just people playing with sticks and pucks.”

Unfortunately, denizens of Florida do not generally understand the rules of hockey, its playing so rare and unpublished due to the tremendous lack of empathy for any sort of cold weather. Apparently there are only certain times when it is appropriate to tackle someone in hockey, though a misconception could be that tackling was unrestricted.

Senior Brittany Mercadante said, “I just never thought to watch hockey.”

The general (or major) Floridian ignorance of these sets of rules reduces the sport of hockey to a game in the minds of Floridians. In order to completely appreciate something for what it is, it is true that one must eliminate complete ignorance of the subject. The huge ignorance of the sport of hockey in Florida means it cannot properly be appreciated as a sport. Thus, it is recategorized in Florida as a game.

To read the other side of this heated hockey debate, click here.