From skates to sneakers, Carter Zeeben and Reegan Hiscock are proving they can do it all in two codes of hockey.
After leading the South Island Royals of the sa国际传媒 Elite Under-17 Triple-A League in goals this past season on the ice — 22 in 45 games and 41 points overall — Zeeben has jumped onto the dry floor to lead sa国际传媒 West into the Under-16 International Street and Ball Hockey Federation World Junior Championships in Liberec, Czech Republic, from today through Sunday.
sa国际传媒 West plays Slovakia, Great Britain and Czechia White in pool play. The other pool includes sa国际传媒 East, the U.S., Switzerland and Czech Red. The cross-over knockout playoff round is Saturday with the gold and bronze medal games to be held respectively at the Home Credit and Svijanska arenas.
sa国际传媒 West goes into the worlds as defending champion after having won the 2019 tournament with a team that included Jack Westhaver of Victoria, who played ice hockey in the Vancouver Island Junior League with the Westshore Wolves and Saanich Predators, and Connor Roulette of Winnipeg, a 2021 fourth-round NHL draft pick of the Dallas Stars, who scored 24 goals for the Saskatoon Blades last season in the Western Hockey League and 24 goals for the Seattle Thunderbirds in the previous WHL season.
Hiscock, a returning forward on the ice with the Victoria Grizzlies of the sa国际传媒 Hockey League and committed to NCAA Div. 1 Northeastern, is also a ball hockey player and representing sa国际传媒 at the U-20 level at the world championships in Czechia.
Ball hockey, unlike ersatz floor hockey in a gym or road hockey, mirrors ice hockey more completely as it is played five-on-five plus two goaltenders in a proper hockey rink. The difference is it is played on sport-court flooring or a polished concrete box-lacrosse floor with a ball replacing the puck.
That’s why many ball-hockey players also play ice hockey in winter and use the dry-surface summer version as conditioning and to keep reflexes honed.
Ball hockey has historically been most popular in sa国际传媒 and the former Czechoslovakia. Although it is played in most ice hockey-playing nations, and a few unlikely ones such as India, only three countries have won world championship gold medals in men’s elite — sa国际传媒 with six, Slovakia five and the Czech Republic with three.
There is a thriving Vancouver Island Ball Hockey League featuring a women’s division and men’s teams from the Premier Division through Division 6.
The teen Zeeben has been a standout on the Island ball-hockey scene and led the Greater Victoria all-star team at the 2022 Western Challenge Cup in Surrey, from which he was selected to the sa国际传媒 team for junior nationals. Zeeben led sa国际传媒 to the silver medal and was named MVP of the 2022 junior national championships in Winnipeg and earned a spot on sa国际传媒 West for the U-16 worlds.
Zeeben is looking ahead on the ice as well and had an assist in his first junior hockey game as a call-up last season from the South Island Royals to the Victoria Cougars of the Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League.
