Winter brings loads of fun, action-packed sports such as hockey, figure skating, and snowboarding. All of these sports can get very competitive depending on where you are from. Minnesota’s long cold winter creates a competitive hockey season. While in other places, such as Lexington, Massachusetts, figure skating is just as competitive, and Oregon is home to specialized snowboarding academies. One fast-paced sport is snowboarding, due to the deep slopes with the sick tricks that can be done on the snow and in the air.
In our area, there are multiple options to enjoy these winter sports. Located in Santa Rosa, Snoopy’s Home Ice is home to ice skating and hockey. If you want to travel a bit, you can play hockey at Vacaville Ice Sports. Snowboarding, on the other hand, needs snow, hill slopes, and mountain sides. Great spots to rip through the snow are Palisades Tahoe and North Star Resort just east of us in Lake Tahoe.
In the mid 1800s, hockey was created when British soldiers went to Canada and decided to make their own game. Now, Canada is known as the birthplace of hockey. Even though we may not see hockey a lot in America, people in Canada see it everywhere.
Ice skating is known to be a very elegant, precise, athletic, and competitive sport, but back in 1000 BCE, Scandinavian ice skating was for practicality. People now use skating for fun during the winter, but back then its main use was for travel across frozen waterways. The skates themselves were made from either shank, elk, oxen, reindeer, or other local animals. Modern skates are made from leather and steel, making the motion of gliding easier and quicker.
This next sport combines the impressiveness of surfing with the terrain of skiing to create the ultimate winter sport: snowboarding. Statistica states that last year, 8.98 million people went snowboarding, making it one of the most popular sports to do in the snowy mountains, as can be seen from the Winter Olympics to recreational time with family and friends. Snowboarding has roots in surfing, which plays a bigger role in snowboarding’s creation than most would think. They created snowboarding in the 1960’s to capitalize on the popularity of surfing in the 50’s.
Some winter sports don’t need an ice rink, but a mat or court. These sports are basketball and dance. Basketball, being a homemade American sport, is played in a vast amount of high schools and colleges. Dance, on the other hand, may have not been made in America, but has its own independent support from people who appreciate the sport, and has many competitions.
Here at Tech High we have both basketball and dance. Sadly, we do not have our own ice rink or beautiful snow mountain, but we do have the Multi-Use Room (MU). The MU has room for people to practice dancing and basketball.
Don’t waste these winter opportunities, get out there and be a part of something fun. Anyone can be a part of the physicality of hockey, the elegance of ice skating, the quickness of snowboarding, and the teamwork of basketball or dance.
