Underwater Hockey
This is a picture of it I got off the web.
The object is to get the puck in the goal, which is a metal thing. The puck is made of lead, covered with plastic. It sinks fast. The puck is very heavy. You manipulate the puck with a short wooden stick. You basically push it along the bottom of the pool. There is one goal in the shallow end, and the other team's goal is in the deep end. At halftime, teams switch sides, but there is no benefit to having your goal on one side of the other. Everyone wears flippers, a mask, a snorkel, and ear guards.
It's hard to tell people apart. Basically the only way to know who's on your team is by the color of the stick. Black is one team, white is the other. From the surface it looks like a lot of splashing around. If you go under, it's rather lovely: big group of people swimming about. You know, everything in slow motion. When you're in the thick of it, however, it's a different story. The puck is so heavy that you can't pass very far, so it's a little like 3rd graders playing soccer-- the whole team surrounds the ball all the time. Here's a video of people playing.. note, in the video, people constantly coming up for air:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmVpGquQNe4
People are swimming under you, over you, in all directions. You get slapped in the face with flippers, bonked on the head with the stick. It's crazy!
The strangest thing about it is that, it is strenuous, and when you're exerting yourself the most you can't breathe. And if you manage to wrestle control of the puck, you can't sprint it to the goal all by yourself, because you need to come up for air. Even the best players need to breathe once in a while.
For the beginner, getting used to the snorkel is the hardest part. The snorkels we use are meant to be upright when you're looking straight down, but in this sport you often want to look laterally across the pool. I kept inhaling water into it.
It's practically silent. The goals are metal so everyone can hear when the puck hits it. You can't talk, or really communicate at all down there. The ref signals something has happened with a clicker we all can hear. We come up for air and find out what happened.
The other weird thing was nobody knew who won. Nobody seemed to care. Then we all got in the hottub afterward.
I think I'll do it again.
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