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The World Pond Hockey Championship tournament first ran in 2002 in Plaster Rock, a small, rural village in New Brunswick, Canada. It featured 40 teams from the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and some teams from the state of Maine, U.S.A. All of the games are played on Roulston Lake.

The World Pond Hockey Championship tournament was created by Danny Braun, the director for community development of Plaster Rock and the current President and CEO of the event. He first set out wanting to organize an event to help raise money for a new recreation centre for the Tobique Valley community. In 2000, Braun organized a fundraiser in the form of a snowmobile race. The event was popular and well received by the community, but it failed to generate a large enough profit to justify running for more than two years. It was at this point in 2002 that Braun got the idea to organize a pond hockey tournament instead. It was successful, and allowed for the construction of the Tobique-Plex recreation centre that officially opened in November 2007. For the past seven years that the tournament has run, the profits from the event continue to help pay for the operating costs of the centre.

Since its debut, the tournament has greatly expanded from its original 40 teams. It now features 120 teams from 15 countries all over the world such as England, Singapore, the Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico, and Denmark. There are now also teams from all of the Canadian provinces, and from 35 states from the U.S.A. Every year, the event draws over 8,000 people, including many representatives from newspapers, television stations, and other media outlets. In 2007, the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, attended the World Pond Hockey Championships, dropping the puck as the official start of that year’s tournament. It was in this same year that the tournament received over 800 applications from teams wanting to enroll in the competition, which is significantly higher than the 100 applications they received in the first year the championships were held.

There are 20 rinks allowing for 40 teams to play at any given time. Over 200 volunteers help maintain the ice and run the tournament.

The format of the tournament is a four-on-four round robin style. Teams are guaranteed at least five 30 minute games over the course of the four-day tournament. The playoff round starts on the Sunday of every tournament weekend, which features the best 32 teams from the previous rounds.

The nets that players must score on are 6 feet wide but only 10 inches high, so that pucks cannot be shot into other rinks and disrupt other games or spectators. There are no goalies, and players have to be over the centre line of the rink in order to score. To limit penalties, if any penalties are called on a member of one team, the opposing team automatically is awarded one goal. Teams usually consist of 4 players ages 19 and over, but they are allowed to have a fifth in case of injury or illness.

Although there is a trophy awarded to the first place team, the organizers of the tournament stress the importance of having fun.