When you think of Spain, sun and soccer are what usually come to mind. We captured a regular season game between Jaca and Txuri Urdin, one of only five teams left in Spain’s top professional league.
This article is featured in Issue 2 of Crease Periodical.
Ice hockey is just a blip on the small radar that winter sports have in the country. Those who do support it are, by all accounts, just as rabid as any fan in a “traditional” market.
Unlike some soccer/football players, these Spaniards can actually take a hit...
Camp Nom (Europe’s largest soccer stadium) has a maximum capacity of 99,354, whereas Palau de Gel (pictured) seats a paltry 1,256. Even crazier, the 2018-2019 champion of Liga Nacional de Hockey Hielo, Txuri Urdin’s stadium, can only hold 650 people.
Txuri Urdin now has 20 championships and counting.
Many players work or study full-time and find time for other alternative sports, such as skiing, snowboarding and skateboarding due to Superliga’s brief two-month long season.
Although it seems like mostof these player’s will always play their games off to the side, the league has managed to stick around in one way or another since 1972. With hockey’s overall global growth, along with the relative success of the Spanish athlete in general (7 Gold Medals in the 2016 Olympics), maybe we’ll see more of these players in the near-future.
In the small Canadian village of Wellington, Ontario, some of Canada’s top chefs left their grueling kitchen schedules to face off in a tourney exclusively featuring fellow food architects of the North.
Chris Roberts-Antieau is a Michigan-based multimedia artist with galleries in New Orleans and Santa Fe. As a lifelong Red Wings fan, she created a series of iconic player portraits based on Rafter Banners in her unique folk art style.