Many students at Guelph may not have heard of underwater hockey before, but for members of the team, it’s a close-knit community. This year’s presidents and co-captains Alison Feist and Jacob Shears embody the kind of teamwork necessary in this game.
To play underwater hockey, two teams of six face off in a pool. Each end has a metal trough for a goal, and the object of the game, just as in ice hockey, is to push the puck along the bottom of the pool and into the goal to score points. Players have sticks and snorkels and from the surface, it looks like chaos.
“You’ve got a snorkel so you can kind of hang out on the surface while you breathe,” explains Shears. “You can still watch the play and when you head back down, you know where you are.”
Feist adds, “That’s the hardest part to get used to, breathing through the snorkel so you don’t have to lift your head up and you can keep watching the game.”
“You’re holding your breath and you have to swim down to the bottom so you basically have to heavily rely on your teammates,” said Shears. “You’re swimming really hard, you’ve got your flippers on, you’re pushing and you’re working hard so you’ve got to come up and take a breath. Your teammates cycle in.”
According to Shears, Guelph’s facility is ideal for this game. “The Gold Pool is flat all the way across the bottom. It’s beautiful.” However, it’s possible to play underwater hockey even in pools with a deep end. In this case, Shears says, “Basically we hit the bottom, we push [the puck] up the slope or we push it down the slope, and it just adds a different element or dynamic to the play.”
Feist agrees, adding, “It makes it a lot more complicated. It’s fun.”
Underwater hockey as a university sport is unique in that it is not limited to university students, and instead welcomes players of a broad age range. Some of the players on Guelph’s team are in their forties and fifties, and started playing when they were students at the University. Feist believes that this variety enriches the dynamic of the team. “It’s like a really close-knit community,” she says, “Everybody knows everyone. It’s really interesting, maybe because it’s a smaller group who plays–not everybody knows about it.”
Guelph’s team, named the Flounders, is open to any student and always welcomes new members.
According to Shears, the team has been operating at Guelph for almost 50 years, competing in tournaments in both Canada and the United States. Their first tournament of the season took place in London a few weekends ago.
“This was the first year that our team scored a goal in our first tournament,” says Shears. “Usually we’re pretty disorganized at the start of the season, so we’ve picked up really quickly. Everyone is doing awesome, everyone is getting involved and enthusiastic.”
Describing underwater hockey, Feist says, “It’s just a different sport. You tell people you play underwater hockey and they’re like, ‘what is that, I’ve never heard of that.’ So it’s just interesting to teach people about a new sport. I’ve learned a lot.”
Shears adds, “I think for me, aside from the reason that it’s my way of being competitive and having proper competition, it’s the social environment. Everyone is friends.”
The co-captains agree that underwater hockey is a worthwhile pursuit. “I would say it’s definitely a sport that’s worth trying out,” says Feist. “It sounds weird at first but once you get the hang of it it’s actually really fun.”
“It was not what I was expecting,” Shears recalls. “Someone mentioned underwater hockey and my first response was no, that’s stupid, this sounds awful. And I basically went to the tryout to prove how stupid it was, and I was like no, this can’t be a thing and I kind of got swept up. It was really surprisingly fun.”