Many thousands will watch Hamilton’s floorball players

When the Canadian National Floorball Team hits the court at the 2014 World Floorball Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden on Saturday, nearly half the team will be composed of players from Hamilton.

“Hamilton (produces) such good floorball players because of the roots that have been created in Hamilton over the years,” said forward Connor Smith.

Those roots trace back nine years, when Sherwood Secondary School gym teacher Anthony Herrington introduced floorball to his Grade 9 class. Fast-forward to 2014, and Herrington is the general manager of Team Canada, and a number of his former students are key mem- bers of his team.

“We’ve all been playing floorball together since we were 14 years old,” said Smith, “I think that definitely helps, and I think we’ll see that benefit us against some of these powerful European countries.”

Other Hamilton natives joining Smith will be his brother Cal, Joel Inouye, Dan Hewco, Tristan Schram, Billy Petrie, Spencer Ridgewell, Dan McKeen, Chris Haigh, Jeremy Peters, and Andrew Radjenovic, who says once they played floorball for the first time, they were hooked.

“I’m pretty sure that’s all we ever wanted to play (in gym class). We were pretty upset if we didn’t get to play it.”

That hard work paid off, and the many of those students are now re- presenting their country on the world stage, something Smith says is both a privilege and a responsibility.

“It’s a huge honour. We’re so lucky to have this opportunity. Even though floorball isn’t nationally known around Canada like hockey is, it still gives you that experience to put the leaf on your chest and play for your nation.”

“One thing we strive for is to play with some integrity and to play with some heart. In the back of your head you have to remember that you’re playing for your nation and that you’re representing Canada.”

This year’s squad features five returning players from the last world championships, which were held in Switzerland. Team Canada went 0-3 in the qualification round and placed 13th. Radjenovic says the goal in 2014 is improvement.

“We want to finish higher than we’ve ever finished. If we can win out in the round-robin, I think getting to the quarter finals and seeing what happens from there is a reasonable goal.”

Canada will play three roundrobin games beginning Saturday night against Denmark. They will Australia on Sunday before closing out the qualification round against Russia on Monday.

Of those opponents, the only team that Canada has lost to in prior competition is Russia. Still, Team Canada faces some adversity.

“We have a bit of a battle to go through, dealing with jet lag (Sweden is six hours ahead) and travel,” Smith said. “Our opening period of the tournament with a bunch of yelling, screaming f ans is going to be a little overwhelming at first, but I think we have enough experience and leadership on our team that will help us relax.”

The 2014 tournament has already broken its record for ticket sales, with over 110,000 sold by the opening of the tournament on Friday. By comparison, for the entire World Junior hockey championships in Sweden last year, total attendance was just 144,000.

Smith said it will be a much different experience playing in front of a large, rambunctious crowd as opposed to a much smaller one at Sherwood.

“It’s not that you want to ignore the crowd, you want to embrace it.” Special to the Hamilton Spectator