Do you love hockey? Do you also love to swim? Then why not both. Octopush is the sport no one knew they wanted, the sport of underwater hockey. Out of all the underwater sports out there in the unknown, this sport, Octopush (by the way great name), is by far the best in my opinion. The main thing about Octopush is that your underwater most of the time trying to get to a puck on the bottom of the pool and score into the other teams goal. When I swim, I never really stay on the top of the water, I love diving down and swimming below the top–its way more fun–so I really like Octopush for its underwater swimming requirements. You also have goggles and flippers on so you can really fly around under there.

I mean come on, just look at that picture, it looks so cool. Just people flailing around underwater all maneuvering their way to a small puck. This sport reminds me of when I was a kid and my friends and I would throw those small rubber rocket dart things into pools and we’d all dive in to find them first. No lie, I was actually really good at getting the rocket first as I just really loved to swim underwater. Those really were the times.

As for the rules of Octopush, as you may have guessed, they are just the rules for hockey  with some tweaks. There aren’t really zones like there are in hockey, there’s just two sides. Also, a lot of the rules are a little simplified like penalties and just the basic principle of getting the puck into the other goal. The sport of Octopush is a non contact sport, but it can get quite physical. Also, only 6 players are allowed to be underwater at any one time. It’s also kind of obvious that you need a flat pool to play this sport with so that one side doesn’t unfairly get an advantage. The pool needs to be 25 meters in length, 12 meters wide and 2 meters deep (sorry for the metric since its played in countries that use meters and I’m too lazy to switch it into feet).

Octopush was originally invented in the 1950s by the British navy in order to keep their divers in shape and improve their efficiency whilst underwater. Since then it has become quite popular in places like the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. Although I have never heard of this sport prior to my research, let alone see anyone play it, I truly hope this sport begins to pick up in America as it really is a gem of a sport. Penn State sadly does not have an Octopush club, and I don’t think we have any flat pools that meet regulations, but in all honestly if enough people were interested, I would love to make this sport a reality at Penn State.