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Underwater hockey club draws diverse group

August 11, 2010

In high school, Aaron Schwartz-Duval was on the swim team. Not wanting to abandon the pool entirely after going to college, he decided to embrace a different kind of water sport — underwater hockey.

After joining the MSU underwater hockey club, Schwartz-Duval, now a biochemistry and molecular biology junior, said he’s gained an appreciation and understanding of a sport many in the U.S. don’t even know exists.

“I heard about this crazy sport just from the list of clubs at MSU when I did my (academic orientation program),” Schwartz-Duval said. “I just happened to ask the pool coordinator and he told me to try it so I did.”

Unlike traditional ice hockey, underwater hockey outfits the players in fins, masks and snorkels. The game is played with a three-pound lead puck that stays on the bottom of the pool. Other than a few necessary differences in rules and regulations, club secretary and player Gabbi Simon said the game isn’t drastically different from ice hockey.

“It’s basically hockey,” said Simon, an animal sciences sophomore. “It’s just on the bottom of a pool.”

One main difference from the ice version is the lack of some key players, Simon said.

“There’s no goalie,” Simon said. “But you still have an offense and defense.”

Schwartz-Duval said the sport is fun because it is unlike any other that you would play on land, with the water allowing more freedom than many of the more traditional sports.

“If you’re playing soccer, you can’t play in the air,” Schwartz-Duval said. “But in underwater hockey, you can be above somebody, or below somebody or to the side of them and it adds a whole other aspect to it.”

In addition to the freedom, Schwartz-Duval said he also appreciates the equal opportunity provided by the water.

“It’s a sport that pretty much any shaped person can do and become successful at,” he said. “If there’s some super buff dude who can throw anyone around, they don’t really stand out in underwater hockey.”

Although the sport experiences its least amount of popularity in the U.S., club treasurer and member Andrea Vandermeer said that the smaller size of the community tends to make it more close-knit.

“There’s teams throughout the country but we pretty much know everyone,” Vandermeer said.

Unlike more mainstream sports, team members agree that recruiting players for the team is almost as difficult as matches themselves. The team lost many members to graduation in the spring and is looking to add more this fall.

“We’re always looking for new members — especially now (that) a lot of our team has graduated or moved on,” Vandermeer said. “Coming up this year we definitely need a lot more freshmen to come and play.”

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