Floorball is an indoor sport. It is played on a court that is almost like an ice-hockey rink, except that the ice is missing and that the boards are just half the height. Floorball is a young sport. It has only excisted for about twenty years.

History

Floorball was in the beginning something that was played just for fun in schools on small courts and with small goals, and it was not taken as a real sport. It was developed more and more as the interest for the sport grew. Finally it looked just like it does today, with full size courts and big goals.

Some important dates in the history of floorball:

• The first floorball club in the world, Sala IBK, was formed in1979 in Sweden.
• In 1981 the Swedish floorball federation was started.
• 12 April, 1986 the International Floorball Federation was started by Sweden, Finland and Switzerland.
• In 1996 the first World Championship was settled. It was played in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, and with the host country itself as the final winners.
  

How is it played?

Both teams have got six players each on the court, including one goalkeeper. All the players, except the goalie, have got plastic sticks. The goalkeeper’s equipment is a helmet and a special goalkeeper-suit.
The game is played with a hollow plastic ball that has a lot of holes in it.
The games are played for three times twenty minutes, with two breaks of about ten minutes each.
There are two referees controlling the game. Some of the rules that separate floorball from other sports is that you not are allowed to pass the ball with the head, the hands or the feet.

I play florball in a club called BK96 and I think it is a great sport.
Have you ever seen a floorball game yourself?

© 2001 Freeway
Writers: Christian Lindblom (sp02-15@park.se)
HTML by: ONy (olle@park.se).