Some of the earliest video evidence of the sport is newsreel
footage from the
Giornale Luce taken in
Vienna,
Austria in 1938. The video shows players using
inline skates with five metal wheels and a front wheel brake. Each team has four skaters plus a netminder. They are using
ice hockey sticks, with taped blades, and the goals closely resemble ice hockey goals of the wire-mesh type common in Europe around that time. The game is being played with a ball on a rectangular outdoor court, which appears to be asphalt. The exact same footage was used in a newsreel produced by
British Pathé in 1938.
History in North America In the United States, the
USA Roller Sports (USARS) predecessor organization was the Roller Skating Rink Operators Association (RSROA). In 1940, the RSROA published a set of
roller hockey rules drawn from a booklet by the
National Hockey League (NHL) which was designed to grow interest in playing
hockey on
roller skates. However, because of the intervention of
World War II, the organization of roller hockey
tournaments did not receive significant development until after this war in the late 1940s. At first skating club interest was confined to the northern tier of the United States, including the bordering
Canadian cities. Puck roller hockey's spread in popularity during that period was helped along by the attention of local commercial television, which was getting its start and in desperate need for events to fill air time. The increased interest in the sport led in 1959 to the selection of a National Puck Hockey Committee to formulate special rules for the performance of puck hockey in the variety of rink sizes available to roller skates. The American Roller Hockey Association (ARHA) was formed with Joe Spillman, a roller rink operator from
San Antonio,
Texas as its first Commissioner. Under Spillman's direction, the sport of hockey on roller skates grew rapidly throughout the United States. During the 1960 RSROA National Roller Skating Championships held in
Little Rock,
Arkansas, exhibition games for ball and puck roller hockey were held. Following these Nationals, the first full competitive season officially began in North America for roller hockey. This, of course, had puck roller hockey entirely performed on quad skates, for at that time there were no
inline skates available. State and regional competitions determined the teams that would move on to the North American Championships. In 1962, at
Pershing Auditorium in
Lincoln,
Nebraska, both ball and puck hockey were part of the North American Championships. The Arcadia Wildcats from
Detroit,
Michigan, defeated the
Van Wert Chiefs 3–1, becoming the first puck hockey national champions on quad skates.
Inline skates were not commercially available during that era. On 1 September 1965, during their semi-annual board meeting, the RSROA installed puck hockey as an equal and separate division of roller hockey, which included ball hockey, a format most popular in Europe and South America. It was decided that both ball and puck hockey would compete under the same rules and award separate gold medal winners. Budd Van Roekel, RSROA president, was quoted in the January 1965 issue of
Skate Magazine, The 1966 North American Championships marked the return of puck hockey after a four-year hiatus. The final game was a nail biter and the crowd appreciated the fast pace and excitement of puck hockey. The final game was between the Canadians of
Windsor,
Ontario and the Wildcats of Detroit, Michigan, the defending champions from 1962. The score seesawed between the two teams and was finally decided in favor of the Canadians with a final score of 5 to 3. The win gave the Canadian team their only gold medal for the whole North American Championships. One Canadian team player was quoted in the 1966 Fall issue of
Skate Magazine, "We simply had to win the (puck) hockey championships, otherwise our fathers wouldn't allow us to return home." Another milestone occurred for puck roller hockey in 1977, when the North American Puck Hockey Championship was held in a venue away from ball hockey for the first time. The 1977 puck championships were staged in
Houston,
Texas to large crowds and a great amount of publicity, as fourteen newspapers and television stations covered the event. The year 1977 was also a milestone for women with this championship marking the debut of a women's hockey national championship.
Transition from quads to inline The very first inline roller hockey team to earn a USA National Championship title did so at a USA Roller Sports (USARS) National Championship held in
San Diego in July 1993. At the previous 1992 USARS National Championships, also staged in San Diego, the San Diego Hosers won the Senior Gold Division title wearing their customary quad roller skates. As of that time, the Hosers manager/coach Paul Chapey felt that while
inline skates were obviously faster, the advantage was to quad skates because of their assumed greater maneuverability. Some teams and individual players at the 1992 Nationals had been equipped with inline skates, but perhaps had not yet mastered their new vehicles. During the ensuing year, Paul Chapey became an inline convert and the San Diego Hosers came back to the USAC/RS Nationals in 1993 entirely on inline skates and recaptured their national title. This significant event took place at least a year before all the other major roller inline hockey organizations were even in existence, including National Inline Hockey Association (NIHA), USA Hockey InLine, North American Roller Hockey Championships (NARCh) and American Inline Roller Hockey Series (AIRHS). USA Roller Sports, under the auspices of
Fédération Internationale de Roller Sports (FIRS), established and hosted the first
World Inline Roller Hockey Championships for men at the
Odeum Arena in
Villa Park,
Illinois (a suburb of
Chicago) in 1995. USA Roller Sports established the first Inline Hockey World Championships for Juniors, again in Chicago in 1996, following the USA National Championships. The first World Inline Hockey Championships for Women occurred under sponsorship of USA Roller Sports in
Rochester,
New York in 2002. Since the introduction of these events, FIRS National Federations around the world have annually perpetuated inline world championships. USA (Ice) Hockey and
International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) began their men's
InLine Hockey World Championship in 1996, after the first such world championship by FIRS and has yet to organize a women's inline hockey world tournament or one for juniors. In March 2002, the
United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Membership and Credentials Committee officially reaffirmed that USA Roller Sports as the governing body for inline hockey in the United States, which continues to this day. This determination was based on a conclusion by the USOC that internationally the sport of inline hockey is recognized as a discipline of roller sports. Then, as now, USA Roller Sports is a member in good standing of Federation International de Roller Sports ("FIRS"), the international federation for roller sports as recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and FIRS is also recognized by the
Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) as the controlling international federation for inline hockey, a sport of the
Pan American Games.
History in Europe For training purposes especially for hockey players, inline skates were produced in small quantities by several companies which were in fact modified ice skates, one of them was the "Speedy" by
SKF which was available also with hockey-wheels. This changed when mass-produced inline skates from the USA were available in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s first leagues started. Inline roller hockey was introduced to the
World Games for the first time in 2005, an
International Olympic Committee (IOC) sanctioned event under the jurisdiction of the
International World Games Association (IWGA), an affiliate of the
General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF). The
United States won the gold medal, with
Canada taking the Silver and
Switzerland the bronze medal. Inline roller hockey replaced
rink hockey (ball and cane) on the World Games program for
Duisburg,
Germany at the 2005 quadrennial World Games. Rink roller hockey had been part of the World Games since its first organization in 1979 at
Santa Clara,
California, as have the other disciplines of
roller sports. During the General Assembly of the IWGA, which took place in
Madrid on 14 May 2003, the IWGA unanimously agreed that inline roller hockey was the responsibility of FIRS and that this variant form of roller hockey would be included on the program of the 2005 World Games in place of the previous format. This same scenario had previously played out before the Pan American Sports Organization in 1999, when inline hockey made its first appearance at the Pan American Games in Canada, and repeated again four years later in the
Dominican Republic. PASO extends continued recognition of the inline hockey under the jurisdiction of FIRS. (sub to PAPA H) Due to the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, World Skate banned Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from its competitions, and will not stage any events in Russia or Belarus in 2022. ==Professional inline hockey==