The people behind Bermuda’s winning bid to host the ball hockey World Masters Championships next year aim to add to the island’s burgeoning reputation as a sports destination.

“We’re very excited,” said Mathieu Desjardins, of the Bermuda Ball Hockey Association.

As a forerunner to the event, which is for men aged 40 and over and women aged 35-plus, the BBHA will be playing host to the Bermuda Ball Hockey Classic from September 28 to October 2.

“We started the journey a few weeks’ back with no expectations, just with our small 2017 tournament,” Desjardin said. We spoke to George [Gortsos, the International Street & Balll Hockey Federation president] pretty much off the record and he mentioned there could be an opportunity if we put in a bid. We thought: ‘All right. Maybe we could give it a shot.’

“We went back and forth, put together a PowerPoint presentation, a 20-pager, on how Bermuda can be a good destination for the Masters. It’s going to be very competitive.

Gortsos was on island recently and was very impressed with Bermuda as a location and the local bid team’s presentation.

“This is a watershed moment for ISBHF; the opportunity to have one of its premiere world championship tournaments hosted in such an unprecedented, gorgeous atmosphere,” the ISBHF said. “Players doing battle by day, followed by beautiful views and a laid-back atmosphere after sunset; this will certainly go down as one of the most memorable championship tournaments in the history of international ball hockey.”

And Bermuda aim to put on a competitive show for potential supporters.

“A lot of the guys who won the B Pool at the World Championships four years ago are in the Masters age group now and being on island it will be a lot easier to put our best team forward,” Cam Poland, of the Bermudian governing body, said. “So the Masters team should be a strong team and a contender to win a medal.

“They’ve been playing together for ten years, so there’s a lot of chemistry. We know the systems that we run. We’ve played each other in our leagues, so it will be a strong team that Bermuda puts forward.”

Desjardins also wanted to thank the Bermuda Tourism Authority for their role in the winning bid.

“The BTA helped us host our mini-tournament this year, with the vision of us having something bigger and it just came a lot faster than we thought,” he said. “If anybody on the island would like to help us stage the event, we’d love to hear from you. We’re certainly extending our hands to Bermuda stakeholders to be involved.”

Poland and Desjardins are hopeful that next year will not the end of big ball hockey events on the island.

“The guys who will be coming will be very competitive, but we want them to have a great Bermuda experience, so that they can tell their friends to come to Bermuda,” Poland said. “Hopefully, more tournaments can come to Bermuda, so we think it can open up a lot more opportunities for the island.

“We go to all these destinations every two years and promote the island and it would be nice to promote our own league to Bermuda.

Desjardins added: “There’s been a lot of interest just in the website we built for the mini-tournament. We do leave our mark wherever we go. George was very interested in 2022 as well, and we have a lot of ideas to make it an epic tournament.”

What is ball hockey

Ball hockey is closely related to ice hockey, as opposed to field hockey. The game is played in a rink, but on foot and on a non-ice surface, player equipment is different and a puck is used instead of a ball.

The first biannual ball hockey World Championship was held in 1996 in Bratislava, Slovakia and Canada won gold, the first of a record five titles. However, the Slovaks have won the past three titles and four overall, with the Czech Republic winning three.

Bermuda have been represented in every tournament since 2001, in which they also had their best-placed finish of fifth.