Last week, the second season of the Hockey One League commenced play after a three-year interregnum due to the global pandemic.
The seven men’s and women’s field hockey teams, playing the game according to the Rules of Hockey, will be criss-crossing Australia for the next two months chasing the second league championship.
But unlike the 2019 version, the 2022 version will have a pretty substantial American presence. The Tasmania Tigers have Brooke Deberdine, Cassie Sumfest, and Jillian Wolgemuth, and the Adelaide Fire has goalie Kelsey Bing, although no American men are playing in the seven-team league.
Still, in the months before the FIH Pro League begins again in earnest, it’s good to see that at least a few members of the U.S. national team pool outside of the domestic leagues are getting some competitive hockey in.
“I have wanted to go abroad to play because the United States doesn’t have a club system, so I was looking at going to the Netherlands or Australia,” Bing tells the Hockey One League website. “I leaned towards Australia because we have our Olympic qualifiers coming up next autumn.”
The Hockey One League is the successor to the old Australian Hockey League, and it is a circuit which, admittedly, has an uphill climb in a nation which has two kinds of domestic rugby leagues, men’s and women’s Australian Rules football, well-attended men’s and women’s soccer leagues, men’s and women’s cricket, and even basketball and baseball competitions.
But Australia is looking to make it work.
It’s about time someone does the same here in America.
TopOfTheCircle.com 
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