At 22 years old, Emily Niskanen has come a long way from playing hockey in Lefroy.
Originally from Stroud, Niskanen attended Sunnybrae Public School in Innisfil and St. Peter's Catholic Secondary School in Barrie; she is a floorball player and a member of the women’s national team that will compete in the World Games in Chengdu, China this August.
“I love where I grew up,” Niskanen said of Stroud, where her parents and younger sister still reside. “It was just the greatest community ever to grow up in.”
Niskanen has long enjoyed competitive sports. She played ice hockey until graduating high school, and has been playing ball hockey since she was 12 years old. She told InnisfilToday that she has played on the Ontario women’s ball hockey team since aging out of the U19 team.
“I play in the league out of Alliston,” she said.
Her team won gold in the women’s division in a tournament in Edmonton last summer.
Though her background in ball hockey helped prepare her to play floorball — which looks similar to ball hockey, in that players have sticks and aim to shoot a ball into the opposing team’s net while running throughout — the mechanics of the game are very different.
She explained the ball feels weightless against the shorter, lighter floorball stick that falls just above a player’s belly button, while a hockey stick usually goes up to a person’s nose.
“The first time that I went out to play floorball and was given a stick to use, I thought I was gonna quit immediately,” Niskanen said. “They are so much shorter.”
“I struggled because the ball in floorball is really light and the puck in hockey is heavy. This is a completely different world.”
But she stuck with it after she was introduced to the sport in March 2024. By the summer, she was playing with Team Canada to qualify for the World Games. At that point, she was a substitute player, but was invited to join the roster when another woman was injured.
“It was a really, really quick turnaround,” Niskanen said.
When reflecting on how her previous athletic endeavours helped her, she noted that ball hockey improved her hand-eye coordination and endurance.
“I like floorball because it kind of feels like a game of keep away,” she explained. “It's a huge passing game. Everyone on the court touches the ball before it goes to the net.”
This World Games will be an historic event, as it is the first time women’s floorball is included. The inaugural Games were held in 1981. According to its website, in 2022, “about 3,600 world-class athletes from about 100 countries competed in 223 medal events for gold.”
Before heading to China in August, the national team will compete in March against the United States in Austin, Texas, in the Women’s WFC 2025 Qualifications AMER. After playing three games, the winning team will proceed to the Floorball World Championship being held in the Czech Republic in December. Niskanen explained that while that championship is exclusive to floorball, the World Games in China includes multiple sports.
She stayed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after earning her Bachelor of Science degree at Dalhousie University last May. She majored in microbiology and immunology and plans to complete the Doctor of Pharmacy program.
Since members of the national team are spread out, teammates are responsible for practicing and keeping in shape. Niskanen told InnisfilToday that she goes to the gym daily, practices with a co-ed Nova Scotia floorball league twice a week, runs 10 kilometres weekly and completes 30 minutes of stick-handling every night.
“When your parents are telling you to practice on your own time, they have your best interests at heart,” she said, as a message to young athletes.
Niskanen said her father often encouraged her to practice stick-handling techniques throughout her childhood. Since playing floorball, she has made it a point to practice skills daily.
“Emily joined us only last summer and she directly made a strong impression,” said national team head coach and director of women's high performance at Floorball Canada, Nicolas Van Thielen.
He has been involved in floorball for 15 years, and started coaching eight years ago.
“She has a lot of energy on the court, she understands the game and ... could play both as forward and as (a) defender. She had three very good games against the U.S. team in August and scored her first goal on the international scene.
“She participated in our training camp in Ottawa in December, and I could see she has trained properly over the last months as she has further progressed and will be an important player to go to Texas and to China. We are thrilled to have her (on) the team, she has an impressive potential and a very good attitude,” he said.
Van Thielen said floorball is not recognized as a sport in Canada.
“Our board is working on the process to get it recognized but I think it will take some time,” he said.
This has serious implications for players and coaches.
“Despite being a national team, we do not receive the funding from the government that other national teams in the country have so all our tournaments, training and travel falls onto the responsibility of individual players,” Niskanen said. “We have a sponsorship incentive in place for interested companies where certain levels of donations can be exchanged for a certain level of advertising in affiliation with the team."
Opportunities include logos on the team website, sponsored social-media posts and patches on jerseys and other gear.
"I am certainly speaking for our entire organization in saying we would be so grateful for any level of donation a company or individual is willing to contribute to support our upcoming travel," Niskanen said.
When asked how she feels to be among the first women to compete in floorball at the World Games, she said: “It is just such an honour. The past few years recognition for women’s sports has finally taken off and it just makes me so excited for the future of women’s sports not only in the floorball community but in all sports. The upcoming generation of female athletes are getting to grow up seeing female athletes receive the support and attention they deserve.”
To learn more about the sponsorship incentives offered by the national team, contact Van Thielen via email at [email protected].