Field Hockey 3:
International Field Hockey
Men's field hockey followed a different pattern of international growth. The sport spread throughout the British Empire in the late 19th century, becoming particularly popular in Australia and India.
Field hockey was on the program for the 1908 Olympics in London, but the only countries that took part were England, Ireland, and Scotland.
At that time, the host country pretty much decided what sports were to be included in the Olympics. Field hockey wasn't on the Olympic program in 1912, but it was back in 1920, when four countries participated: Great Britain, Denmark, Belgium, and France.
In 1924, the International Olympic Committee took charge of the Olympic program and dropped field hockey because the men's version of the sport had no international governing body. During the Paris Olympics that year, the Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon (FIHG) was founded by Austria. Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Spain, and Switzerland.
That was too late for the 1924 Olympics, but field hockey was restored to the Games in 1928, when India won the first of six consecutive Gold Medals, a streak broken by Pakistan in 1960.
American men were introduced to field hockey by an Englishwoman, Louise Roberts, who had been invited to the U. S. by Constance Applebee. In 1926, she was coaching at Rosemary Hall School in Greenwich, Connecticut, when she was asked to demonstrate the sport to a group of young men led by Henry K. Greer. When the Field Hockey Association of America (FHAA) was organized to govern men's field hockey the following year, Greer was elected president; he served until 1958. He was the playing manager of the first U. S. Olympic field hockey team in 1932.
Greer and Roberts were married in 1928. Their son, John, was playing manager of the 1956 Olympic team and the coach of the team that won a bronze medal at the 1967 Pan American Games. He served as president of the FHAA from 1977 to 1984.
The FHAA joined the FIHG in 1930 as a prerequisite to entering a U. S. team in the 1932 Olympics. Women's field hockey didn't become an Olympic sport until 1980, and the International Olympic Committee then began pressuring the men's and women's international governing bodies to merge. That happened in 1982, when the two organizations formed the Fédération Internationale de Hockey (FIH).
The U. S. Olympic Committee, similarly, wanted a single governing body in the United States to bring field hockey into line with the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. After a proposed merger between the USFHA and FHAA fell through, both organizations applied for recognition from the IOC in 1992.
That led to more negotiations. Eventually, the FHAA agreed to merge into the USFHA, which was recognized in February of 1993 as the sole national governing body for the sport.
The women's sport remains much stronger than the men's in the United States. The NCAA has conducted national championship tournaments for women's field hockey in all three divisions since 1981, while field hockey is unknown as a varsity sport for men and exists as a club sport at only a few schools. On the high school level, more than 60,000 girls compete on field hockey teams, compared to fewer than 300 boys.