When people think of sports, they might imagine Friday night football games, Olympic track events, and packed basketball arenas. However, beyond these mainstream competitions are athletes who crave something different from the rigid structure of those traditional games. To fill this vacuum, alternative sports like underwater hockey, ultimate frisbee and pickleball have recently swelled in popularity.
One example of this is an aquatic twist on traditional ice hockey. Originating in Britain, underwater hockey now has over 15,000 players across 40 countries according to ESPN. Tristan Reynard of the Confederation Mondiale Des Activites Subaquatiques (CMAS), or the World Underwater Formation in English, is the director of underwater hockey in New Zealand.
“Underwater hockey is similar to ice hockey, but it’s on the bottom of the pool,” Reynard said. “There’s two teams that push the puck into the goal tray at each end of a standard court that is 25 meters long, 15 meters wide, and about 2 to 2.5 meters deep.”
The game, originally called Octopush, is played with a mask and snorkel. The sticks are less than a foot long and have a flat, slightly curved blade to help push the puck along the pool floor. The game relies on teamwork, positioning, and quick dives to control the puck. However, despite its name, players do not typically spend too much time beneath the surface.
“It’s not really an extreme sport at all,” Reynard said. “The water is an equalizing factor. One of the American guys did a study and on average you’ll only spend about 11 seconds underwater at a time.”
As a young swimmer, Reynard became interested in underwater hockey when he saw it was being offered at his high school. The Wellington Underwater Hockey Association described New Zealand as the forefront of the sport, along with South Africa and Australia.
“I just wanted to swim, naturally, and when you’re around 14 years old you tend to stop competitive swimming in New Zealand and join more team based sports like water polo, and I just decided to do underwater hockey,” Reynard said. “We had a school league, and then there was a national competition. We attended that.”
While some sports thrive in the depths of a swimming pool, others stay dry on land. The bright green courts of pickleball pervade Austin, as well as many social media feeds. This colorful pastime originated in the ’60s but has experienced a recent surge in popularity. LASA freshman Elias Siegal described how he has integrated pickleball into his weekly routine ever since playing it with his family on vacation.
“There was a pickleball court at the hotel, and my family started playing it there,” Siegel said. “After we went back home we found some courts here in Austin. At first it was something for the family to do, but eventually we started taking it more seriously.”
Siegel explained that the rules of pickleball are similar to tennis except that there is no serving overhand, and the paddles are made of solid plastic as opposed to a racket. He learned these differences while observing the shift in the sport’s popularity firsthand at Austin’s Jewish Community Center.
“I was one of the first to play on their pickleball courts,” Siegel said. “In the past year or two, I’ve for sure seen some new faces. Also, in general, just the quantity of people at the courts have gone up. It used to be you could come in at two on a Saturday and they’d be empty, but now if you want the court to yourself you’re going to have to go earlier or later in the day.”
Siegel noted that the increased attention sports like pickleball have gotten from a wider audience may be due to social media. He described how viral videos and influencers brought publicity to an otherwise obscure take on tennis.
“I remember seeing a professional pickleball league which I was not aware of prior to that day,” Siegel said. “I looked them up and saw that they had thousands of followers on Instagram. Honestly, I didn’t think that many people cared about pickleball. In other cities pickleball is just what older people play, but in Austin especially I see a lot of young adults. Those adults are probably on social media and post about it, and then their friends see, then their friends play, and it keeps going like that.”
While sports like underwater hockey and pickleball put a twist on traditional sports, ultimate frisbee, or simply ultimate, offered at LASA as a club sport, has made its mark on fields across the country in its own way. LASA sophomore Lucca Ostrovich picked up the sport in sixth grade and is now the captain of one of the B-teams.
“The more I played the more the community grew on me,” Ostrovich said. “I’ve always had a fondness for the interconnectivity of frisbee, everyone is respectful and recognises at the end of the day it’s just a game and you’re there to have fun. I think that really motivated me, and also it’s just a really fun sport. And I’ve carried that mindset and it just led to me now being a captain.”
Ultimate isn’t regulated by UIL, which, according to Ostrovich, allows for a more flexible and community-driven environment. He believes that the freedom sports like ultimate offer due to the lack of regulation of them is what continues to draw more and more participants and competitors to them.
“I think it’s really growing just because of the accessibility of the sport,” said Ostrovich. “Maybe five years ago it was only 16 million people playing in the U.S., and now it’s almost doubled at 31 million.”
