One Last Time

[lunatim]

SCUBA Dog, you played u/w hockey?  Cool!  Were you with the local team ( )?

yelloduc:

Yes, there is such a sport.  I think it was invented in the UK back in the 50s by a team of divers who wanted to keep up their skills in winter.  It's basically hockey, but played on the bottom of a pool with a plastic-coated lead puck and a couple of movable goals.  Players wear mask, fins, snorkel, ear protection, and a glove.  The stick is really short, about a foot long, and there's about the same number of players as with ice hockey.  The local team, the Loons, meet twice a week--Wednesdays and Sundays--for practice.  Good snorkeling skills are necessary for this game, and it can be a serious contact sport at times.  Many teams are co-ed and, believe me, the women are just as good as the men if not better.

The game is more popular in Europe and Australia, but it's popularity in the USA has been growing in recent years.  There's also a sport called underwater rugby which is rougher, but that's more of a European thing.  There's even underwater ice hockey which is like u/w hockey, but played on the underside of a frozen lake--you can surmise that this is something of an extreme sport and few people play it.  Rumor has it that they even tried underwater polo, but the horses kept drowning