US vs. Canada Men's Floorball Qualifying Match

Fast-paced, international floorball hits the Caltech campus on February 2nd in Brown Gymnasium and February Huntington Beach, as the US and Canadian men s national teams clash at 8pm on consecutive nights. Floorball is similar to floor hockey and was originally developed among Scandinavian countries in order to emphasize skill and speed over a hack-and-slash style of floor hockey. The Caltech Floorball Club and the US Floorball Association, along with the Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (APER) department at Caltech, are hosting the events at Caltech/Huntington Beach in order to bring this exciting sport to the public at a grassroots level. Both matches will be free to the general public.

The two matches will allow the US and Canadian squads to test their readiness for the World Floorball Championship (WFC), which will take place in Bern and Zürich, Switzerland from December 1st to 9th. The US team hopes to avenge losses to Canada during the 2010 American qualifying matches which kept them from earning a spot in the 2010 championship tournament. Meanwhile, Canada will test the effectiveness of a new squad and a new coach, as well as the reboot of its national development plan, against the US team. The two teams were to compete in an American Qualifier tournament with Brazil for two spots in the 2012 WFC prior to Brazil s withdrawal from the tournament at Caltech due to financial constraints. Both teams will now qualify to the WFC.

Caltech enjoys a unique spot in the history of floorball in the United States as it was the original seat of the US Floorball Association established in 1998 when the US joined the International Floorball Federation, the international governing body of floorball. By hosting the US versus Canada matchups, the club hopes to grow the sport locally. Floorball continues to be played in Brown Gym on a weekly basis in the form of informal pickup games, and recent initiatives by the APER department led the club to develop the first-ever Southern California Floorball League. The Caltech club defeated their local rivals, the Los Angeles Innebandy Club, 6-5 in a preseason competition and have started their league season with a record of 1-1, defeating Inland Empire FC 3-0 and falling to So. Cal. UFC 5-1.

The Caltech Floorball Club is open to anyone in the Caltech community, including people who have never played before not exactly a rarity given the sport s cult following in the US. The club is led by Andrew Beyer, a post-doc in Physics, and is coached by Jason Rabinovitch, a graduate student in Aeronautics. Drills and pick-up games take place in Brown Gym on Mondays at 9pm and Wednesdays at 10pm. More info can be obtained by emailing the group at [email protected]. Websites: Caltech club: floorball.caltech.edu; IFF: www.floorball.org and links therein to the US/Canada sub-page within the IFF site.

Sponsors include: Unihoc for Team USA, Salming for Team Canada. Event is sponsored by the USfbA and Floorball Hockey America (http://www.floorballhockeyamerica.com/).