Basingstoke Bison Ladies Ice Hockey Team

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History / Background

looking back to the past

hockey history

Most historians place the roots of hockey in the chilly climes of northern Europe, especially Great Britain and France, where field hockey was a popular summer sport more than 500 years ago. When the lakes froze in winter, it was not unusual for the players who fancied that sport to play a version of it on ice.

An ice game known as kolven was popular in Holland in the 1700's, and later on the game really took hold in England. In his book, Fischler's Illustrated History of Hockey, veteran hockey journalist and broadcaster Stan Fischler writes about a rudimentary version of the sport becoming popular in the English marshland community of Bury Fen in the 1820s.

Not surprisingly, the earliest North American games were played in Canada. British soldiers stationed in Halifax and Nova Scotia, were reported to have organized contests on frozen ponds in and around in the 1870s, and about that same time in Montreal, students from McGill University began facing off against each other in a downtown ice rink. The continent's first hockey league was said to have been launched in Kingston, Ontario, in 1885.

This then later evolved into hard hitting action seen today on television.

 

Basingstoke Team Background

the team started in 1990 with a group of 20 girls, originally under the name of Basingstoke Panthers we changed to the Bison Ladies in 1996. Carla Massey, Lucy Barfoot and Hannah Driver are the three remaining players from the 1990 team but Hannah Driver being the only one of the three to play every season with the Bison since the start of the team.
           in 1998 the Bison were the undefeated champions of div 1 south, dropping only 1 point all season in the final game, and were promoted to the Premier division. They chose to go back down to div 1 south and won the league in the 2001/2 season. We then returned to the Premier division again, on the promotion the team split in to 2 different teams so they had a div 1 team as well, The Bears.
        
      Over the years there have been several international players. Julie Saint, Helen Stowe, Lucy Barfoot, Natz Aldridge, Tazz Quinn represented  Great Britain or England. Sarah Audsley, Sam hart and Sam Jones have represented Wales for ice hockey and Claire Millard, Laura Stark, Lisa Collingwood, Natz Aldridge, Kerri Van-Etteryk, Hannah Driver and Jo Boyce have all played rollerhockey from a variety of disciplines for Great Britian.