In a Moroccan oasis town on the edge of the Sahara, nomads in turbans and tunics thwack a camel-wool ball across the desert in a traditional pastime: sand hockey.
Similar in many ways to field and ice hockey, but played barefoot and with palm wood sticks, the ancient game is called mokhacha in the local Hassani Arabic dialect.
“We play mokhacha in our spare time,” said one participant, Hamadi Boudani, at the International Nomads Festival in the southern town of M’hamid El Ghizlane.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Our ancestors were nomads and as soon as they pitched their camp somewhere they would first rest and then, to pass the time, they would start a game,” he said. “This game is part of Saharan tradition.”
The players were cheered on by enthusiastic fans as they churned up the sand in what was once a stop on the storied caravan route to Timbuktu.
They were wearing the daraa, an ample tunic favored by nomadic tribes, and a cheche cloth turban to cover their heads and faces from the desert sun.
The two teams, one in white the other in blue, played on May 1, during the annual Nomads Festival, which also celebrates song and dance and other desert traditions.
Each team is made up of at least seven players, the outline of the pitch is crudely traced by hand in the sand, and the referee is simply known as the sheikh.
Sand hockey “is part of our ancestral heritage”, said Rachid Laghouanm, who heads an association that promotes traditional sports and games in M’hamid El Ghizlane.
“It was handed down from father to son, and it is vital that it does not disappear,” he said.
Like other popular or traditional games and sports, “nomad hockey” as it is often called, is fading into oblivion.
“We are trying to create awareness about the game” by organizing competitions and encouraging players to join them, Laghouanem said.
The UK-based Hockey Museum, which says it is “the first and only museum of hockey in the world,” said that sand hockey has been around as long as any form of hockey “has been in existence.”
Forms of sand hockey are also played in Ethiopia, where it is called genna, and in Tunisia under the name oggaf, the museum says on its Web site.
These and the Moroccan version, “date back over hundreds of years and a number of these games are still thriving, almost unchanged, to this day,” it says.
Other experts believe that hockey’s precursor was a stick-and-ball game with origins as far back as ancient Greece and Egypt.
Boudani said he does not know which came first — sand, field or ice hockey — but what is clear to him is that “the nomads had no means of knowing that Westerners had a similar game.”
Bologna on Thursday advanced past Empoli to reach their first Coppa Italia final in more than half a century. Thijs Dallinga’s 87th-minute header earned Bologna a 2-1 win and his side advanced 5-1 on aggregate. Giovanni Fabbian opened the scoring for Bologna with a header seven minutes in. Then Viktor Kovalenko equalized for Empoli in the 30th minute by turning in a rebound to finish off a counterattack. Bologna won the first leg 3-0. In the May 14 final in Rome, Bologna are to face AC Milan, who eliminated city rivals Inter 4-1 on aggregate following a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Bologna last reached the
If the Wild finally break through and win their first playoff series in a decade, Minnesota’s top line likely will be the reason. They were all over the Golden Knights through the first two games of their NHL Western Conference quarter-finals series, which was 1-1 going back to Minnesota for Game 3 today. The Wild tied the series with a 5-2 win on Tuesday. Matt Boldy had three goals and an assist in the first two games, while Kirill Kaprizov produced two goals and three assists. Joel Eriksson Ek, who centers the line, has yet to get on the scoresheet. “I think the biggest
From a commemorative jersey to a stadium in his name, Argentine soccer organizers are planning a slew of tributes to their late “Captain” Pope Francis, eulogized as the ultimate team player. Tributes to the Argentine pontiff, a lifelong lover of the game, who died on Monday at the age of 88, have been peppered with soccer metaphors in his homeland. “Francisco. What a player,” the Argentine Football Federation (AFA) said, describing the first pope from Latin America and the southern hemisphere as a generational talent who “never hogged the ball” and who showed the world “the importance of having an Argentine captain,
Noelvi Marte on Sunday had seven RBIs and hit his first career grand slam with a drive off infielder Jorge Mateo, while Austin Wynn had a career-high six RBIs as the Cincinnati Reds scored their most runs in 26 years in a 24-2 rout of the Baltimore Orioles. Marte finished with five hits, including his eighth-inning homer off Mateo. Wynn hit a three-run homer in the ninth off catcher Gary Sanchez. Cincinnati scored its most runs since a 24-12 win against the Colorado Rockies on May 19, 1999, and finished with 25 hits. Baltimore allowed its most runs since a 30-3 loss to