Underwater hockey from San Luis began the post-pandemic revival and from the physical set-up, the “Los Patos” team prepares at the University of La Punta Campus.
On Tuesdays from 15 to 16:30, and on Fridays from 16:30 to 18, eighteen athletes of this unconventional discipline train at the “Arturo Rodríguez Jurado”, and take the practical part in a swimming pool in the capital city on Mondays and Wednesday.
Sergio Fava, president of the San Luis Underwater Hockey Association, remarked: “The sport has been practiced in San Luis for ten years with different groups. Today we are 18 players between the female and male branches of different ages ”.
“Los Patos” is the only underwater hockey team in the province. The sport is practiced in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Neuquén, Mendoza and Córdoba.
There are two athletes from Puntarenas in the Youth Team on the way to the 2021 World Cup, and one with a projection for the Major Team, towards the World Cup that was going to be held this year, but that due to the coronavirus pandemic passed to 2021.
The youth are Facundo Naya and Agustín Villegas, and Gabriel Fernández is in the elite preselection.
“It empowers us as a team and on a personal level. We are in one of the best places in Argentina, for infrastructure and for the professionalism and quality of its teachers, ”said Fava regarding the new training space.
The goal is to participate in national post-pandemic tournaments. And from a physical point of view, Fava explained: “Apnea (voluntary suspension of breathing in water while traveling long distances) is very important in this sport and the specific work that teachers mark for us helps us to exploit that facet, and to Our representatives of Selection is decisive ”.
Underwater hockey requires great resistance underwater, so the importance of training freediving. The ball is more like an ice hockey yew, weighs a kilo and a half and is always at the bottom. And the sticks are short. It is played in teams of six members in pools 25 meters long by 12.5 wide and the objective is to score goals in two flats, which are in the corners, at the bottom of the pool.
Underwater hockey in San Luis is immersed as a renewed alternative to the sport of San Luis.
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