Over the weekend, the US girls’s subject hockey group dropped two video games to Group GB and to Germany. Although each had been one-goal defeats, in addition they had been, sadly, defeats.
There will likely be two video games left on this 12 months’s FIH Professional League set of competitors for the People, whereupon a lot of the remainder of the world’s finest girls’s groups will compete for the remainder of the month of June to fill out the whole thing of the Professional League schedule.
The regrettable factor is that the States are going to complete on the backside of the Professional League desk. The U.S. has not gained a sport on this cycle, managing a draw and shedding the rest of their matches.
The U.S. can solely end with seven factors within the competitors, and will be unable to catch any of the groups ranked above them within the desk, except Group GB has probably the most unlikely collapse and lose all 10 video games they’ve left.
It’s just about a foregone conclusion that the US girls will likely be within the relegation zone for the FIH Professional League for the second straight cycle. As it’s possible you’ll keep in mind, the U.S. was speculated to have been relegated to the FIH Nations Cup after ending ninth and final within the earlier cycle. However New Zealand’s males’s and girls’s groups determined to withdraw from the Professional League, giving the States an unlikely lifeline.
It’s superb, to me, that the US, after taking part in so effectively to get to the Paris Olympics earlier this 12 months, now face what’s normally an ignominious course of. Relegation, normally, is a catastrophe for an expert group in lots of sports activities, corresponding to soccer, ice hockey, and even speedway bike racing.
Relegation means taking part in in a decrease league, which might imply a monetary loss by means of tv cash; the distinction between taking part in at an elite league and the second division generally is a $100 million distinction. Typically, star gamers go away relegated golf equipment to stay taking part in on the greater stage. Too, relegation impacts the native economic system. Decrease ticket gross sales might happen due to the lesser competitors, and with that decrease foods and drinks gross sales at native taverns and decrease merchandise gross sales.
I’ve a sense that, after this league season ends, that there’s not going to be one other reprieve.
