‘Swing, Hit, Collision..., Score!’ on the rink.
Shortly before the end of 2024, another good news came to AXHUers from far and near on campus: “Team AXHU three-peat as the defending champion capped off with Peking University and Chongqing University of Science & Technology in the Final Three at the 5th ChineseUniversity Hockey League (CUHL).”
Anhui, forming the divide between the Huai and Yangtze rivers (Jianghuai), is a central province of China, sharing the seasonal monsoon climate. So, “Why the Anhui local institution—although being lack of the necessary natural conditions for winter sports—has fostered the national repeat champion born in the Jianghuai area over the past few years, which was gleaming with the public interest nationwide.”
The story originated from the Fraternity program partly because of the AXHU-wide roller skating booming in 2006 on campus, which helped erect the College Student Skating Association, and later, the AXHU Roller Skating Team in 2014.
Afterwards, the IOC announced Beijing as the host city for 24th Olympic Winter Games, and the head coach ZHANG Aichen at AXHU Gen Ed Department caught on the futures in this domain, turning to the “Skating-turned-Hockey” training program, which is grounded on the previous PE-related course modules and personnel to equip themselves with some new sporting techniques and ideas within the short-time span.
Instead, Zhang and his student athletes of 10 or so unanimously challenged any impossibles such as of training infrastructure, funding, and professional expertise in time, starting at the very beginning seriously with the ping pong balls and broomsticks to take hold on the long-gone rough cinder field.
Nothing but “Crazy & Passion” in the horse-and-buggy days for some possibles left to transform what they experienced toughly that they hadn’t experienced yet, AXHUers won its first title in 2017, ranking 3rd at the National College Student Field Hockey Championship.
After that, Zhang himself leapt to his feet in bold favors on the way to make a change, while making a difference resiliently with much measured support of both AXHU administration and the Administration of Sport of Anhui Province, and in 2019 an International A-level AXHU training base and its affiliations set out according to an educational philosophy of “University-led cooperation with Anhui Hockey Association and Anhui Roller Hockey Team to professionalizing the current students’ practices on and off campus also.”
Year in and out, all-season all-out training efforts still during either muggy summer or chilly winter contributed to the full stories telling their aspiring years of ‘ups and downs’ erupted in jubilation or sagging escape sometime from the breath-taking Dashu mountains climbing on the roller skates to its summit nearly everyday, by which to restore their physical condition maximum at the intensive training camp throughout the university breaks.
The faculty Zhang’s ‘More to gain’ career exercises clearly to help the university students have a chance to clinch the back-to-back games in the second period of the 2024 finals. While at the two bouts against the Team Peking University on the same day, they almost burned out—appearing the ‘stall’ symptoms of such physical disturbance as leg muscle spasm.
Wow! This is a “Dark Horse’s road to success” on the basis of the ‘AXHU PE-driven Educational Innovation’ for the past decades, during which the people have and might be full of contained, reserved, and imposed action to overhaul the conventional understandings of how to further the season-high learning & teaching while at each crossroad.
The time-honored emblem that reads “Team Spirit” to identify, invite and spark every youngster’s excitement over Hockey fandom to test their dreams outshining over the prime time, Zhang advocated.
This is also a “Big Family” contended across AXHU campus, where every member is willing to contribute his or her wisdom and experience that matters in building up a multiple exchange and cooperation platform, on which they can enrich their college life, such as the 4-time regular gatherings every month for a comprehensive personal growth available in all aspects, comprised of sporting excellence analysis, ideological rationale seminar, sociable etiquette, English language competence, and much more.
Today, roller skating has become the ‘Most Popular’ class in AXHU undergraduate general education.
Actually, the Team AXHU candidates are selected from the on-campus students, majoring in CS, Art, Finance & Accounting, etc., at the AXHU schools and departments, which haven’t included any sporting-related degree programs till now.
Some of alumni and graduating students, however, engaged with the Hockey-related occupations such as the coach and counsellor, management & operation of sporting venues, R&D of sports equipmentand services, physical trainer, physio, sporting editor and interpreter, dietitian, and the like.
Over 10 years later, AXHU is already named as the Chinese Roller Skating Demo University and the Anhui Provincial Training Base for Roller Skating.
To date, there are still over 1,000 part-time student athletes, including nearly 10 positive members serving for the current Team AXHU, which had claimed much of success in widespread recognition at the greatest events like the CUHL, and historically contributed 15 field-competitive players (of which, 4 cross-disciplinary ones) agreed to the national Hockey camps.
In the early spring of 2025, future generations of college students will be inspired with and benefit from the lofty educational innovation, upholding the spirit of ‘Overcoming barriers and fighting to the end,’ Zhang called for all the educators’ commitments all-time to the Chinese dreams.
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China Education News and China Education News Web Chinese language journalist FANG Mengyu, and AXHU International Office staff, contributed to this report.
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