|
Underwater Hockey
Timing is Everything in This Breathless Sport
 Listen to Peter Breslow's report.
April 6, 2002 -- Underwater hockey player David Sun says there's one inescapable fact that pretty much defines his unusual sport: "No matter how good you are, you gotta come up for air sometime."
 | |
Fighting for the puck.
Photo: Courtesy the Sydney Whalers
|
As Peter Breslow found out for Weekend Edition Saturday, it usually takes new players a few games before they learn that timing is everything. Flipper-footed players -- six on a side -- chase a 3-pound puck across the bottom of a swimming pool, usually 8 feet deep. They use "sticks" -- actually, curved implements about a foot long -- to push the puck toward a 10-foot-wide untended goal.
Underwater hockey is a "glamorized name for the sport" says Sun, who plays for Washington, D.C.'s Beltway Bottom Feeders. A more accurate name would be "underwater shuffleboard."
Perhaps, but that description leaves out for the physical-endurance component of the game. This is a tough sport. Chasing a puck while dodging opponents, all the while holding your breath, is no mean feat, as Breslow, who gave it a try, can attest.
But more than endurance, learning how to work around the oxygen-deprivation problem is the real key to the game.
Observing the pool floor from above the surface, players watch the action below, diving in at just the right moment. "You gotta know how to hold your breath, when to go down, and (when to) be ready for a pass," Sun says.
Resources
• The Beltway Bottom Feeders.
• Underwater hockey: an introduction.
|
