HOCKEY SHOES SPORADICALLY IMPROVING

By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

The story goes that a major manufacturer of athletic shoes was being wooed to sponsor the U.S. national field hockey team in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But when a stipulation saying that the company not only had to clothe the team, but produce a special show to withstand the rigors of a match, the company backed off.

These days, the shoe is perhaps the most overlooked in terms of its potential as a protector against catastrophic injury, despite the increasing speed of the game as more schools get artificial grass and artificial turf surfaces.

You can get an idea as to the situations many schools and their players are in when you go to a match and check out the footwear. Sponsors can dictate whether a team goes out in soccer shoes (usually meant to caress an inflated bladder rather than protect the ankle), football cleats (gives a player more grip than anything else), or even jogging shoes (terrible for lateral movement).

But in recent years, specialized protective footwear has started to appear. Leading the way is Malik, wearers of which report taking corner blasts off the hard toe and feeling nothing.

Another new entry is Gryphon, whose high-outsoled Viper and Venom shoes offer a fair amount of protection.

But there is one shoe that is the gold-standard for foot protection: the Nike Foamposite.

This basketball sneaker gets reissued every two or three years or so, and at nearly $170 is a hefty investment, but, as The Founder learned during pre-match warmups at the USFHA Summer League, they work.

Nike has tried making different kinds of foam shoes since the Foamposite was first introduced in the mid 1990s with names like Flightposite, but nothing give such peace of mind as the dense foam of the original.

Although a cleated version of this shoe would sell thousands of units for field hockey players, it hasn't been a reality, even in the poor athletic shoe economies since 1999.

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