January 10–16, 2007, Number 427
This is a good picture to show you the gear—ball, broom, knee pads, and helmets. Some brooms are artistically decorated, as you see in the lower left corner.
What exactly is broomball?
I hope all of you enjoyed the holidays and wished your students the best for this new year. After being off for such a long break, it takes students a couple of days to settle back down into their study habits. For some, this is an easier semester now that they know what to expect in their college classes. For others, this is a stressful time as graduation seems to come so quickly and the hunt for jobs becomes fierce. Even with these pressures, there is one winter activity at Michigan Tech that all students can enjoy. This is the amazing sport of broomball.
Many of you may be asking, “What exactly is Broomball?” Well, broomball is an intramural sport at Michigan Tech that draws the most number of students. It is a lot like hockey, as it is played on small ice rinks located between the Walker building and Highway 41. Although the overall rules mirror those of hockey, there are some major differences in the way the game is played.
- There are no skates! Students try their best to run and slide in tennis shoes or boots. This adds a great disadvantage for all and makes the game more fun.
- Instead of hockey sticks, the students use brooms. The brooms are taped up with either duct tape, hockey tape, or like mine, a combination of the two.
- A blue ball about the size of a coconut is also used instead of a hockey puck.
I took this picture after dark, when most games are played. Sometimes it snows hard and our running surface gets really tricky. We like the hard snow because there's a little bit of traction. Bare spots, though, do still exist and can catch you off guard.There are six players allowed on the ice including the goalie for each team. The teams battle it out for two fifteen-minute halves. At the end of the game, the team with the most goals wins. If there is a tie, the teams will play a five minute sudden-death overtime to determine the winner; if nobody scores in that five minutes, the game is ruled a tie.
Since there are so many students that play broomball (on and off campus), it is split into six leagues: Womens, Off Campus, DHH, McNair, West Wads, and East Wads. Each league is then broken down into several conferences. At the end of the season, the top teams from each conference face off. The conference champions then face off for the league championship. The last step is the league champions face off for the overall broomball championship.
To find out when your student is playing or just keep an eye on their statistics, check out the broomball website. Once the season gets underway, there will also be webcams available online so you can try to get a glimpse of your student playing.
If there are ever any topics that you feel should be addressed, please send me a personal email and I will try my best to include that in my future articles.
- Until next week ,
- Michigan Technological University
- 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295
- 906-487-1885