Ice hockey is a minor sport in Mexico, but is slowly growing.

Football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

has dominated Mexican sports for decades, but ice hockey has grown in popularity in Mexico since the 1960s. Women's ice hockey is also growing in Mexico.

History

The game of ice hockey was played in the country for the first time in the 1960s, however the Mexican Federation of Winter Sports ( es, Federación Mexicana de Deportes Invernales A.C.) was not founded until 1984. Mexico joined the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) on 30 April 1985. It is the third

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

n nation after Canada and the United States to join the IIHF.

Domestic league

The Mexican Elite Hockey League ( es, Liga Mexicana Élite de Hockey) is a semi-professional ice hockey league in Mexico and was inaugurated as the Mexican Elite League ( es, Liga Mexicana Élite) on 2 October 2010, with the goal to establishing Mexico's high-level international competitor in ice hockey. Currently it has four professional teams and 17 associated equipment.

National teams

The men's national team played its first game on 10 April 2000 during the 2000 World Championship Pool D tournament in Reykjavík, Iceland, losing to Belgium 5–0. It is the only Latin American team that competes in the IIHF tournaments. The women's national team played its first game on 18 February 2012 against Argentina in an exhibition game in Cuautitlán Izcalli, losing to them 1–0. The following day, they played the Argentinians again, this time winning by a score of 7–1. The women's national team have not competed in any Women's World Championship tournaments until 2014, they played in Division II Group B Qualification tournament. They won all three of their games and earning a promotion to Division II Group B for 2015. The junior national team played its first game on 30 December 1996 during the 1997 World Junior Championship Pool D tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria, in a 13–1 loss to Spain. Mexico City hosted the Pan American Tournament from 2014–2017. The men's national team was the runners-up three times until

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, they won their first ever Pan American Tournament by defeating

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

1–0 in the final, however their opposition is currently not a member of the IIHF due to lack of governing bodies of ice hockey in

Olympic games

On 15 January 2020,

Luisa Wilson Luisa Wilson San Román (born 5 August 2005) is a Mexican ice hockey player who plays in the U18 AA league (see junior ice hockey) of the Ontario Women's Hockey Association (OWHL) with the North York Storm Prep U18 AA in the North York district ...

became the first Mexican to win an Olympic medal in any Winter Olympics sport when her team won the gold medal at the girls' 3x3 mixed tournament, during the

2020 Winter Youth Olympics The 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games (german: Olympische Jugend-Winterspiele 2020; french: Jeux olympiques de la jeunesse d'hiver de 2020; it, Giochi olimpici giovanili invernali del 2020; rm, Gieus olimpics da giuvenils d'enviern 2020), offic ...

in Lausanne, Switzerland.

References

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