Jamaican men's hockey team pushing for more Black representation in hockey

Montreal Gazette

12-07-2025

Hockey
By
Most have heard of the Jamaican bobsled team that stunned the world by making it to the Calgary winter Olympics in 1988, an unlikely tale that inspired the hit Hollywood comedy Cool Runnings.
The next improbable Jamaican winter-sports success story might just be their hockey team. Jamaica's senior men's national ice-hockey team is in Montreal this week participating in the Challenger Series, playing games against teams from three other countries: Greece, Puerto Rico and Lebanon. That's right, we are not talking natural hockey hotbeds here. The tournament takes place through the weekend at the Sportplexe Pierrefonds.
Don Anderson, president of the Jamaican Olympic Ice Hockey Federation, says Jamaicans knows a thing or two about dreaming big, and if the Caribbean island nation could send a bobsled team to the Olympics, he doesn't see any reason why they couldn't do the same thing in hockey. But even he admits that possibility is still a long way off.
The team was only founded at the end of 2010 and it still doesn't meet the stringent requirements to compete at the Olympics. So international hockey powerhouses like Canada and the U.S.A. don't need to worry about Jamaica for the moment.
The players are mostly Jamaican-Canadians, the majority from the Toronto area, and they are one of the only all-Black national hockey teams in the world.
Avery Grant, a 19-year-old defenceman with the team who hails from Oshawa, is proud to be wearing the Jamaican colours of black, green and gold on the ice.
'It's amazing to have players of Jamaican descent come together to play the game that we love, it's just a great feeling to have for all of us,' said Grant, in an interview Thursday morning shortly after the team's practice. 'It's definitely not something you see every day, when you see an all-Black hockey team thriving in a sport that isn't really known on the island. It's definitely a good experience for all of us. With hockey, you don't think of Black players or minority players being its strong suit. You'd think more of soccer, track and field, basketball, stuff like that. So just to have us be as good as we are and play at this level definitely means something not only for us but for future generations to come.'
Anderson has been a key figure in Jamaican international sports for decades. He was a vice-president of the Jamaican Olympic Association for over 30 years before moving over to the hockey federation. In fact, he was at the very first meeting back in the '80s when the notion of a Jamaican bobsled team was discussed.
'I was the first member of the Olympic executive to even open the door literally to the creation of the bobsled movement,' said Anderson. 'There was a gentleman from the American embassy who kept sending us letters to set up a bobsled federation and we laughed at them. We said – 'Is this something you play on ice?' We thought it was a joke. We said, we can't get money for track and field, much less something on ice, that's totally foreign to us. We just threw the letters away. Then he said, what if you guys don't have to raise the money?'
The Jamaican Olympic Association finally agreed to set up a meeting and there were 54 people there, 'and the rest is history,' said Anderson.
'Then he did it again with the ice hockey team,' said Ed Phillipps, who is vice-president of the Jamaican Olympic Ice Federation.
When the Jamaican minister of sport asked Anderson to represent the Olympic association at a meeting in Kingston with the delegation of Jamaican-Canadian and American hockey players back in 2010, Anderson agreed to do it. Willie O'Ree, former Boston Bruins winger and the first Black player to make it to the National Hockey League, was a member of that delegation.
'But I'd never heard about ice hockey,' said Anderson.
There still isn't a single rink in all of Jamaica.
'Ice hockey was easier because bobsledding paved the way,' said Anderson. 'When the ice hockey thing came to the fore, there were naysayers and I said: 'If we did it in bobsledding, we can do it in ice hockey'.'
And it's starting to come together, say Anderson and Phillipps. The team is having more success in international tournaments and now it's easier to watch NHL games on TV in Jamaica, so the awareness of the sport is increasing.
They're doing all this for Jamaican sports, but both are also aware that it's a great way to boost the profile of Black players in hockey everywhere. They say they're seeing more Black players on other national teams since they began competing internationally.
They're literally breaking the ice for more visible representation in hockey.
'We're spearheading Black representation within international ice hockey,' said Phillipps.