Busy year for Jamaica’s ice hockey
THE Jamaica Olympic Ice Hockey Federation has confirmed that the Senior Men’s team will be playing in the Challenger Series of three tournaments between April and July 2024.
This series involves round-robin matches against Puerto Rico and Lebanon who already have confirmed their participation. Greece is likely to be added to this list of countries.
The first set of matches will take place in Chicago between the 18th and 21st of April and Jamaica will be fielding a fullstrength team from its roster of some 80 eligible persons of Jamaican descent in North America and Europe.
The series moves to New York in June with matches scheduled between the fifth and the ninth and culminates in Toronto between the 11th and the 14th of July.
The team, which started playing competitively in 2019, has an enviable record of 12 wins and two losses.
Prior to 2023, the team had played 11 consecutive games unbeaten, firstly winning the LATAM Cup in Fort Lauderdale in 2019 and beating teams like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, defending champions Columbia and Puerto Rico. Like Jamaica, all these teams are associate members of the International Federation.
In the 2021 LATAM Cup, Jamaica, having convincingly beaten all these team two years earlier, was considered to be too strong for the opposing teams and were forced to play as an exhibition team. In that tournament, the team repeated victories against these same teams, and added Lebanon, in the process of scoring 58 goals and conceding only seven.
Both of the losses were in a very competitive series against Puerto Rico in the inaugural annual tournament held last year in New York. Puerto Rico won that series 2-1, the first time Puerto Rico had beaten Jamaica. Jamaica is now 3-2 head-to-head with Puerto Rico, having beaten them convincingly in the LATAM Cup in 2019 and 2021.
Don Anderson, president of the Federation, who was part of the initial launch of our exciting bobsled journey in 1988 whilst still a vice-president of the JOA, feels that this team is on the same path of capturing the hearts of ice hockey lovers across the world and enhancing Jamaica’s very strong sports reputation globally.
Jamaica now has a vibrant local program involving some 50 youngsters aged 8-15 and just completed filming a documentary with 28 of these kids at the GC Foster College which will be aired to the public soon. A number of semesters in the basics of the sport has already been completed at the college with the assistance of tutors from the IIHF.
Jamaica will again be represented at the annual congress of the IIHF in Prague in May, having previously attended congresses in Bratislava, and Tampere, Finland.