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