Bob CollinsHere’s your daily dose of sweetness.
Satellite TV has brought hockey to Kenya. A doughnut company from Canada, displaying marketing genius, took care of the rest.
Twice a week, a small group of players, who learned the game by watching it on TV gather at Kenya’s only skating rink at the Panari Sky Center Hotel in Nairobi.
But because there are so few players, the Ice Lions have never played another team.
Until Tim Hortons flew the team to Canada.
It was a nice moment and great marketing, for sure, but something was missing from the Tim Hortons story: women.
Five women play for the Ice Lions, ESPN reported four days before the Tim Hortons video was released.
As the country enters the final stages of creating the Kenyan Ice Hockey Federation, plans are in the works to build a men’s national hockey team. But where does that leave the women?
Right now there are not enough players to support a women’s team, but that doesn’t stop Otieno and her teammates — Carroll Joseph, Alexcy Wambui, Faith Wambui and Faith Sihoho — from making big plans. “I think one day you will see Kenyan women playing hockey at the Olympics,” Carroll says. “When we were little, there were no women playing ice hockey in Kenya that we could look up to. We want to be those women for the next generation of Kenyan girls.”
“I want to show girls that it is important to be themselves,” Faith Sihoho told ESPN. “That every person is a unique piece of art and finding what makes you different is the key to success. For me, that thing was hockey.”
(h/t: Paul Tosto)
