Raymond Leclerc is considered to be the founder of dek hockey. In Massachusetts, Leclerc constructed a model site for people to go and play dek hockey.
History of Dek Hockey
By: Cathy Francisco
Period: 7
Timeline
During the 10th century, a very similar sport or activity played, was a version of dek hockey today. People used sticks to push around the rocks which symbolizes the puck.
In the 1500s, Natives in North America played a game that is very similar to of ice hockey today.
By the 1900s, the sport, dek hockey was becoming more and more prevalent because people were now playing in the streets and near their houses.
A version of ringette was introduced as a sport in the Winter Special Olympics in 1932. In 1970, the Special Olympics added team floor hockey as an event, with the distinction of it being the only team sport under its purview.
Dek flooring was being introduced in the 1960s. The first modern games of hockey took place in Canada around the same time.
In the early 1970s, when Raymond W. Leclerc, the founder of the Mylec Corporation, along with several prominent players in the Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada, established rules for the more organized forms of the game.
In Canada, the sport was organized for tournament play on a provincial and national level in the late 1970s, with the founding of the Canadian Ball Hockey Association.
Dek hockey was featured in well known magazines such as Sports Illustrated and Newsweek in the 1970s. This not only publicized the sport but brought light to a new form of hockey.
Habitant Arena in Toronto, Ontario, hosted the first organized summer hockey program in 1969. This then inspired the United States to follow and officially start the sport in the 1970s.
The Canadian Ball Hockey Association (CBHA) was formed in 1991 to provide more formal leagues of ball-based floor hockey.
In 1971, the Mississauga Ball Hockey Association was started. It is the oldest continuously run league of dek hockey.
The International Street and Ball Hockey Federation was created in 1993 as a non-profit organization to regulate dek hockey and its competitions.
In January 2013, the US DekHockey Federation was created as a nonprofit 501c organization dedicated to promoting and spreading the sport of dek hockey throughout the United States.
In 2003, the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association Hockey Committee released a baseline set of rules for intramural floor hockey for college campuses across the United States.