BBC TV Feature on Sledge Hockey: The Ultimate Inclusive Team Sport
12 March 2010
Sportsround, the sister show of Newsround has recorded a feature on Sledge Hockey to coincide with the 2010 Vancouver Winter Paralympic games.
The feature shows Paralympians from Team GB, demonstrating Ice Sledge Hockey, children experiencing Sledge Hockey for the first time as well as children using “off-ice” sledges to play recreational Inline Sledge Hockey. The feature will also include footage from the recent Cash for Kids Sledge Hockey Challenge featuring the Hull Stingrays All Stars and the Grimsby Redwings All-stars. Both the Stingrays and Redwings teams feature professional ice hockey players, Paralympic athletes, junior and senior club level players.
Sledge Hockey is a variant of ice hockey and can be played on and off ice, using sledges to allow participants to move about the rink at high speeds hitting a puck travelling at speeds of up to 100kph. Players sit in adapted sledges, propelling themselves with sticks adapted to allow propulsion in a manner similar to skiing. As players are strapped to a sledge everybody has the same restrictions, regardless of whether or not the player has a disability.
Ice Sledge Hockey is a Paralympic sport played using the same rules as ice hockey and Team GB competed in the last Paralympic Winter games in Turin in 2006. Off-ice Sledge Hockey, officially called Inline Sledge Hockey, is a new variant of Sledge Hockey developed in the UK by the British Sledge Hockey Association and uses specially designed sledges with wheels.
There is no classification points system dictating who can be involved in play within Sledge Hockey (simply an eligibility classification for Paralympic events) unlike other team sports such as Wheelchair basketball, rugby and sitting volleyball. This makes Sledge Hockey the only fully inclusive sport.
Equipment is exactly the same as for ice hockey with the exception of the sledge and an additional stick. Sledge Hockey is a full contact sport and the rules are the same as those for ice hockey with a small number of additions to allow for the difference in equipment.
The broadcast details for the feature are;
12th March 2010 @ 6:30pm - CBBC Digital Channel
13th March 2010 @ 7:25am – BBC2
Sportsround is also available on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/sport/default.stm
(the feature will be available after 7pm 12th March 2010
For more information please contact;
Matt Lloyd, BSHA, 07737 226 761, matt@sledgehockey.co.uk
www.sledgehockey.co.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/SledgeHockey