Color of Hockey: Egypt program making huge strides on, off ice

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Egypt Ice Hockey, which hosted Egypt Ice Hockey Cares 2024 on July 5, an event at an ice rink in a mall in Cairo for orphans, children displaced by regional conflicts, and other youth.

Egypt Ice Hockey strives to be successful on the ice, as well as doing good deeds off it, in its homeland.

That’s why the program hosted Egypt Ice Hockey Cares 2024, a day of skating, face painting and other activities for more than 200 orphans, children displaced by regional conflicts and other youth at a rink in Sun City Mall in Cairo on July 5.

“Even though some of us live in the U.S., we have our roots here in Egypt and we always want to give back to the home country,” said Yasser Ahmed, an Egypt Ice Hockey managing member who lives in New Jersey. “The event went great. Everybody, as far as I can tell, had a great time. Just seeing the smiles on the kids that have never skated before, never really had a chance to see ice before, go out there and enjoy the few hours of ice time to get out of whatever hardship they’re going through.”

It was the third such event hosted by Egypt Ice Hockey, which hopes to grow the sport in its nation and aspires to someday send teams to the Winter Olympics.

“For orphans, for the disabled, for refugees, people will usually support them with food or clothing," said Egypt Ice Hockey managing member Sameh Ramadan, who also grew up and lives in New Jersey. "But fun, or what I call the luxury of being on the ice, is something that’s not usually given in the middle of the desert. We started with a couple of orphanages in Alexandria and Cairo and it’s kind of grown since then.

“Kind of the way it works out is me and Yasser and other managing members ... (say) ‘We’re going to go to Cairo, when do we overlap?’ Then we pick a date and then we kind of go to work in maximizing turnout, finding the ice and making an event and a nice day for all the children.”

This year’s event was part of a busy and historic season for Egypt Ice Hockey. The program launched Egypt’s first women’s ice hockey team that debuted in April at the inaugural Dream Nations Cup for emerging hockey nations at The Rink at American Dream in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

The women and Egypt’s men’s Division III and a coed Under-16 teams will compete at the 2024 Amerigol LATAM Cup Aug. 21-25 at Florida Panthers IceDen in Coral Springs, Florida.

They will be among the 1,100 players representing 17 countries at the annual tournament supported by the Panthers, the NHL and the NHL Players' Association.

Egypt Ice Hockey also is in the process of applying for associate membership in the International Ice Hockey Federation. It hopes to join a growing list of IIHF full and associate members from the Middle East and Africa, including Algeria, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, South Africa and United Arab Emirates.

But for its ice dreams by the Pyramids and the Nile River to come true, Egypt Ice Hockey needs to have an NHL or international-sized rink in the country. Cairo, Egypt’s largest city with almost 23 million people, has three ice rinks that are about 20 percent of the size of an NHL rink.

Having events like Egypt Ice Hockey Cares allows Egypt Ice Hockey to do good in the community while bringing awareness to the program to help it achieve its goals, Ahmed said.

“Every time we continue to do events, we’re always accomplishing something because hockey in Egypt is still such a far-fetched idea,” Ahmed said. “Every time we do something, we’re always proud of how far we’ve come along.”