Sports Associations

Home – Sports & Leisure – Sports Associations

Whether you’re looking for individual or team sports, Sudbury has the association for you. Choose from summer, winter or year round sports.

Greater Sudbury also has a sports council called Sportlink.  Sportlink is a non profit organization comprised of several board members who are experienced in several domains including sport, media, event planning, volunteering and administration.

Baseball / Softball	Baseball was based on the English game of rounders. Rounders became popular in the United States in the early 19th century, where the game was called "townball", "base", or "baseball". Alexander Joy Cartwright (1820-1892) of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. The first recorded baseball game was played in 1846 at the Elysian Fields, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Softball is a direct descendant of baseball. Some key differences between softball and baseball are that softballs are larger than baseballs, and pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand.
Basketball	James Naismith was the Canadian physical education instructor who invented basketball in 1891. James Naismith was born in Almonte, Ontario and educated at McGill University and Presbyterian College in Montreal. The first formal rules were devised in 1892.
Boating	Humans have tended to live near water, and it is natural to make use of things that float. Boats of all kinds have been made by technologically primitive communities, and many continue to be made into the 20th century. From 3000 BC, both the earliest civilizations, the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian, made extensive use of boats for transport on the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris.
Curling	Scots and continental Europeans have engaged in many a lively dispute as to the true origin of curling. Both claim to be founders. Did Scots invent the game, or was it imported by Flemish (Dutch) sportsmen who emigrated to Scotland during the reign of James I of England? Did Europeans engage in some early form of curling, and did Scots merely adopt and enhance it? The evidence, based on works of art, contemporary writings, and archaeological finds, has sparked a number of theories, but nothing is conclusive.
Football	The game of football began modestly enough, yet it had certain durable qualities, and it inspired a particular kind of determined devotion in its followers. The games that are now known as Rugby and Association Football began in England about halfway through the present century. There are records of earlier forms in China, at least two thousand years ago, in ancient Greece and Rome. But it was in England, more than 100 years ago, that football began to take the shape we now recognize.
Gymnastics	It is not known how, or when gymnastics began. Maybe, the first gymnast was an early human, good at swinging from tree branch to tree branch. Old stone cuttings show that the ancient Egyptians enjoyed building human pyramids, and showing acrobatic activities, around 3000 B.C. About a thousand years later, the Chinese developed a version of gymnastics called Cong Fu. However, the Greeks, about 2500 years ago, were the first to use gymnastics for fitness and sport.
Hockey	The history of ice hockey is one of the most contested in all of sports. The city of Montreal had been traditionally credited with being the birthplace of hockey, but early paintings contest this claim; 16th-century Dutch paintings show a number of townsfolk playing a hockey-like game on a frozen canal.
Karting	Karting was first introduced to the UK by American servicemen during the Second World War. Over the next 30 or so years the sport gradually established itself as the favoured starting point for single seater racing drivers to learn their craft.
Lacrosse	Early in the 19th century, Europeans in Canada began playing the game. Montreal's Olympic Club organized a team in 1844, specifically to play a match against a Native American team. Similar games were played in 1848 and 1851. However, the first step toward turning lacrosse into a genuinely organized, modern sport came when the Montreal Lacrosse Club, founded in 1856, developed the first written rules. George Beers of the MLC rewrote the rules thoroughly in 1867 and is known as "the father of lacrosse".
Ringette	During the 1960's, Mr. Sam Jacks was the Director of Parks and Recreation in North Bay, Ontario. He dedicated a great deal of time and enthusiasm to developing youth activities and one of his particular interests was to develop an on-ice skating game for females. He named the fledgeling game "ringette" and the first-ever ringette game was played in the winter of 1963-64 in the Northern Ontario town of Espanola. Ringette has never looked back. It is now played in half a dozen other countries around the world.
Rod and Gun Clubs	Shooting at a mark as a test of skill began with archery, long before the advent of firearms (c. AD 1300). Firearms were first used in warfare and later in sport shooting (hunting), and because of the shadowy early history of firearms, it is not known when target shooting began. The early history of the sport is largely that of shooting with rifles.
Skating	The exact time and process by which humans first learned to ice skate is not known, though archaeologists believe the activity was widespread. The convenience and efficiency of ice skating to cross large, icy areas is shown in archaeological evidence by the finding of primitive animal bone ice skates in places such as Russia, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Germany, and Switzerland. The runners were made from bones of cattle. They were ground down until they formed a flat gliding surface, and thongs tied them to the feet.
Skiing	Before skis were used for fun and leisure, the ski was used for work and transportation. The oldest known version is a wide, short ski found in Sweden that has been shown to be over 4500 years old, and cave and rock drawings suggest that skis were used even long before then. The first organized events in skiing, jumping and a type of cross-country race, started in the early 1800's, and both used the Nordic system.
Soccer	It is impossible to say accurately where and when soccer started - but it is reasonable to assume that some type of ball game - from which the organized sport we know today developed - has been played somewhere on the planet for over 3000 years. Britain is the undisputed birthplace of modern soccer/association football. Scotland and England being co-founders of the organized game.
Swimming	Swimming has been known since prehistoric times. Drawings from the Stone Age were found in "the cave of swimmers" near Wadi Sora (or Sura) in the southwestern part of Egypt near Libya.
Tennis	It was in France that the game of tennis as we know it today really came into being. During the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries it became the highly fashionable sport of kings and noblemen and was called ' Jeu de paumme' - the game of the palm. Early French players would begin a game by shouting 'tenez' i.e. 'Play!' and the game soon became known as Royal, or Real Tennis.
Table Tennis	Like many other sports, table tennis began as a mild social diversion. Descending, along with lawn tennis and badminton, from the ancient medieval game of tennis. It was popular in England in the second half of the nineteenth century under its present name and various trade names such as Gossima and Whiff-Whaff.
Volleyball	The game of volleyball, originally called "mintonette", was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan, after the invention of basketball by only 4 years. Morgan, a graduate of the Springfield College of the YMCA, designed the game to be a combination of basketball, baseball, tennis and handball.