Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 22, 1992 TAG: 9203200212
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
To play underwater hockey you have to take a dive.
Underwater hockey, the sport that invites dumb jokes, is played on Saturday nights on the bottom of a Virginia Tech swimming pool.
It is played despite the inconvenience to players of not breathing.
There is also the threat - during the quick life-sustaining snorkel trips to the pool's surface - of sucking in chlorinated water instead of air.
This is no idle threat.
"The first time you play, you drink half the pool," said underwater hockey-ist Julia Gajewski.
Gajewski is a member of the Underwater Hockey Club at Virginia Tech, a group of Tech students who meet on a prime party night to don snorkels and swarm like tadpoles on the bottom of the War Memorial Gym pool.
For fun.
And, for the record, members are a little tired of jokes.
"Somebody said it looks like a trout farm - all those people wiggling underwater," said club president David Sun, one of about 45 underwater hockey enthusiasts at Tech.
Sun and the rest are ready to be taken seriously, as an official Tech intramural sport.
Intramural status would win the players some help from the school in organizing their sport - though team members still would pay fees for lifeguards and for other expenses, said Leo Smith, Tech's assistant director of recreational sports.
In addition, intramural status could earn the Saturday night puck-pushers a little more respect.
Seems all the jokes have their fins up.
"We're getting sick of being made fun of," Sun said.
If only it wasn't so easy.
Underwater hockey, after all, sounds like Jimmy Hoffa's favorite hobby. Or the punch line to a dumb joke:
Question: What do blond ice hockey players play in July?
Answer: Underwater hockey!
For the record, Sun said there are blond underwater hockey players at Tech.
Smart ones.
Blond or not, club members may have to wait a while for their dignity.
Tech must balance underwater hockey against other contenders such as water polo, water basketball and flickerball in deciding who gets intramural status, Smith said.
"We've got lots of sports that are interested in having the department run them formally," but intramural dollars are limited, Smith said. He said the Underwater Hockey Club would have to show that more students would benefit from their sport than from the others.
Underwater hockey was conceived as an off-season training exercise for scuba divers, Sun said. Though it is open to all students, many of the Tech players are scuba divers.
"It gives you a real workout," said Gajewski. "It perfects your snorkeling ability."
Teams consist of six players in the water at a time and several players in reserve, Sun said. As in ice hockey, points are scored by knocking a puck into the opponent's goal - in this case, a long metal bar on the pool bottom that pings when struck.
The sport is not confined to Tech. There are more than 40 teams in the United States, according to the Underwater Society of America in Daly City, Calif. - which calls underwater hockey "America's fastest growing team sport."
As a spectator sport, it has limits.
To the observer, there is no sound - just a murky thicket of arms and legs. Bodies swirl silently on the bottom of the pool for long minutes, drifting in one direction and then the other. During a recent game between the Tech club and the Puck Hogs of Beckley, W.Va., the poolside bleachers had plenty of empty seats.
All the excitement, apparently, is underwater.
One might even say - though the players undoubtedly wish one wouldn't - that the appeal of underwater hockey is hard to fathom if you're not all wet.
Gajewski was fresh from the pool when she explained the sport's attraction this way:
"It's like no other sport. You're exhausted when you come out, but you feel refreshed."
Sun made it simple.
"It's fun."
by CNB