Player Retention and Recruitment in Underwater Hockey
Underwater hockey is often described as exciting, fast and addictive but unfortunately that view is not shared by many outside the sport. Despite clubs working to grow the sport, there are not many turning people away. At the National Team level in North America it is rare to have any serious competition for spots. We all have personal definitions of serious; my view of a serious try-out process would involve 20 players that were all fit enough, skilled enough, and knowledgeable enough to make the final team. The fact is that the drop off in skills and fitness is so rapid that the players competing for teams rarely need to put in the time and effort that a mid-level university scholar-athlete would.
The journey from rookie to elite level play is ill defined and unsupported amidst an obstacle course of cliquey teams and small town politics. Many elite players enjoy their leadership roles but spend the majority of their time and money travelling around North America playing with their friends. They forget that leadership is about serving the sport or the clubs they belong to. The reality is that player recruitment and retention is a critical issue. We have too many recreational players, and even more of our leadership, unwilling to step up, invest time, and help solve or even identify the problems.
As players in the sport, we need to take a hard look at ourselves to explore why we are unable to grow underwater hockey and what the real barriers to entry are. I understand it is a busy world and few clubs are geared towards creating successful environments focused on building core adult recreational programs. We do have some adverse conditions not within our control such as pool space, pool profiles, competition with other water sports and the steep learning curve. We need to take a critical look at the things we could change and start doing them. If you read this article and start listing all the things that you are doing right you are probably missing the point of this article.
The journey from rookie to elite level play is ill defined and unsupported amidst an obstacle course of cliquey teams and small town politics. Many elite players enjoy their leadership roles but spend the majority of their time and money travelling around North America playing with their friends. They forget that leadership is about serving the sport or the clubs they belong to. The reality is that player recruitment and retention is a critical issue. We have too many recreational players, and even more of our leadership, unwilling to step up, invest time, and help solve or even identify the problems.
As players in the sport, we need to take a hard look at ourselves to explore why we are unable to grow underwater hockey and what the real barriers to entry are. I understand it is a busy world and few clubs are geared towards creating successful environments focused on building core adult recreational programs. We do have some adverse conditions not within our control such as pool space, pool profiles, competition with other water sports and the steep learning curve. We need to take a critical look at the things we could change and start doing them. If you read this article and start listing all the things that you are doing right you are probably missing the point of this article.
The Problem
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Within our sheltered cliques we vacillate between maintaining it as a sport for true athletes and inviting Fred's grandma to the party. We will tell people that age, skill, size and gender don't matter but don't have any systems or processes in place to protect anyone that actually believes that statement. New players have to compete in the same pool as the better players and we rely on each player to choose how much time or space they will allow the player. We welcome everyone out to just show up and then offer them poor equipment and little to no instruction beyond critical feedback.
We lack any understanding of good coaching and allow random players to coach the newbies without any long term vision of what they are trying to achieve. The players coaching during a game will rarely give up their own time to coach players in a non-playing format. We assure people that the sport is co-ed and non-contact but when the most effective move seems to be the smash through... it is anything but non-contact. We seem to have this need to tell rookies that they have to play a particular position, typically as a forward, where they have the worst view of the game and get the most contact. We tell anyone that will listen that it is an easy sport to learn when it actually requires a highly specialized, incredibly technical skill set with complex movements that you have to learn while holding your breath. We have eroded club identity to the extent that we merge clubs to create better travel teams to compete with National try-out teams. Club teams, except for one or two of the strongest clubs, cannot hope to travel and medal because the Open divisions are won by whatever group can recruit the best whore players (usually taking the best 2 or 3 players from multiple clubs) and the recreational divisions are dominated by women's elite travel clubs. |
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The Problem - Itemized
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Most clubs have one or two new players a month. That's, let's say on average, ten per year, ish.
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THE JOURNEY TO SUCCESS
The Rookies Team (The good guys)
If they survive the friendly but hurried poolside introduction we throw them in the water and tell them they are a forward. We think it is very simple but just in case it wasn't clear in the 30 minute or less pre-pool chat we follow up by allowing every player in the water to pretend they are a coach and offer 'helpful' feedback on the new player did wrong, or even worse, "could do better". The veteran player is often only trying to be friendly and helpful (with a little value signalling maybe) but the rookie is now in the pool learning how to fin, swim, move, position, and dive for the puck, all while under stress, and not breathing.
They haven't even made it to the puck let alone know any of the skills needed at the puck. If the rookie survives the first session they start to meet all their different and well meaning teammates: Frank who says "Hey you are doing great, you just need to be a little more aggressive"; Kelly who whispers " you're doing great but just protect the puck a bit more by curling"; and Chris who says "Hey you are doing awesome but don't curl so much just head to the goal". The common chorus is well meaning advice aimed at helping the rookie NOT MAKE MISTAKES and each player assumes they are helping because, after all, that's how they learned.
Moving forward a few weeks, and to everyone's delight the rookie is hanging in. In many ways being a good athlete is now a detriment because everybody decides to help the new found prodigy to stardom by reviewing each play the rookie makes and explaining to them how great they are but how much better they could have done if only they had... insert helpful players personal view of how UWH should be played. The rookie is now getting multiple people on multiple plays explaining to them how they could be just a little better.... The rookie gets the message that "they have done something wrong". If they try and correct the problem and do it the 'right' way somebody else will tell them something different. All of these interactions are between plays or between calls (although many pools don't make many calls because they somehow believe you can play the very subjective advantage rule without a referee).
The Opposition (The bad guys)
The opposition is chosen from the same eclectic and slightly weird group of players, each with varying opinions on the best way to educate and explain the game to the newbie. Darren wants to ensure the new players get the best experience they can, without impacting the game or the score. He will then allow the player to slowly move the puck and waits patiently until the newbie passes the puck or leaves it alone and then smashes the next player to touch it. Sheryl really wants to help the newbie so she gently places her stick against the puck and holds it there, leaving the rookie no choice but to push harder while looking at the puck, she thinks she is letting the newbie 'have a go' but somehow hasn't thought about the benefit of giving the rookie time to look around, or that it is far from the smartest move to immobilize the rookie's wrist. Sheryl is teaching the newbie to keep his/her head down and push in a straight line. Melody is the kindest of the bad guys so she lets the rookie to swim the puck into the goal (but also makes it very obvious so that her teammates know she wasn't beaten by the newbie). Melody and all the players on both teams cheer this great goal without realizing that the newbie is thinking; "Why are they cheering? The girl let me score." As the newbie gets better and gains some confidence, the bad guys continually up their game just enough that the newly developing player finds it difficult to feel successful.
If they survive the friendly but hurried poolside introduction we throw them in the water and tell them they are a forward. We think it is very simple but just in case it wasn't clear in the 30 minute or less pre-pool chat we follow up by allowing every player in the water to pretend they are a coach and offer 'helpful' feedback on the new player did wrong, or even worse, "could do better". The veteran player is often only trying to be friendly and helpful (with a little value signalling maybe) but the rookie is now in the pool learning how to fin, swim, move, position, and dive for the puck, all while under stress, and not breathing.
They haven't even made it to the puck let alone know any of the skills needed at the puck. If the rookie survives the first session they start to meet all their different and well meaning teammates: Frank who says "Hey you are doing great, you just need to be a little more aggressive"; Kelly who whispers " you're doing great but just protect the puck a bit more by curling"; and Chris who says "Hey you are doing awesome but don't curl so much just head to the goal". The common chorus is well meaning advice aimed at helping the rookie NOT MAKE MISTAKES and each player assumes they are helping because, after all, that's how they learned.
Moving forward a few weeks, and to everyone's delight the rookie is hanging in. In many ways being a good athlete is now a detriment because everybody decides to help the new found prodigy to stardom by reviewing each play the rookie makes and explaining to them how great they are but how much better they could have done if only they had... insert helpful players personal view of how UWH should be played. The rookie is now getting multiple people on multiple plays explaining to them how they could be just a little better.... The rookie gets the message that "they have done something wrong". If they try and correct the problem and do it the 'right' way somebody else will tell them something different. All of these interactions are between plays or between calls (although many pools don't make many calls because they somehow believe you can play the very subjective advantage rule without a referee).
The Opposition (The bad guys)
The opposition is chosen from the same eclectic and slightly weird group of players, each with varying opinions on the best way to educate and explain the game to the newbie. Darren wants to ensure the new players get the best experience they can, without impacting the game or the score. He will then allow the player to slowly move the puck and waits patiently until the newbie passes the puck or leaves it alone and then smashes the next player to touch it. Sheryl really wants to help the newbie so she gently places her stick against the puck and holds it there, leaving the rookie no choice but to push harder while looking at the puck, she thinks she is letting the newbie 'have a go' but somehow hasn't thought about the benefit of giving the rookie time to look around, or that it is far from the smartest move to immobilize the rookie's wrist. Sheryl is teaching the newbie to keep his/her head down and push in a straight line. Melody is the kindest of the bad guys so she lets the rookie to swim the puck into the goal (but also makes it very obvious so that her teammates know she wasn't beaten by the newbie). Melody and all the players on both teams cheer this great goal without realizing that the newbie is thinking; "Why are they cheering? The girl let me score." As the newbie gets better and gains some confidence, the bad guys continually up their game just enough that the newly developing player finds it difficult to feel successful.
Success
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The Problem - Itemized
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I love this sport and the people that play it, but sometimes it is worth looking at change to create improvements. We should aspire to create best practices for player recruitment and retention. We need to find ways to remove the contact from the game and keep rookies safe from the battle unicorn barrelling down the pool ready to smash through anyone in the path. This would also benefit those other players who don't want to get smashed on a casual hockey night. We must allow rookies to develop without worrying about the strategy and tactics involved in positional play and avoid the continual "Hey, move over there." Or alternately, just push the rookie to where you think they should be. In all sports, success is based on time and space. We should formalize how much time and space we afford a rookie so it is not dependant on the personal feelings of the opposition, the score, or how close to the goal the play is. |
We need to educate players that their constructive feedback is not coaching or helpful (or at least an incredibly poor form of coaching). A new player has likely already been bombarded with multiple opinions (on the same night) of what they could be doing better. The defence of "well, how else are they going to learn" or "that's how I learned" is not particularly helpful. This continual feedback gets worse in the rare situation when the rookie survives a year or two.
Skill acquisition is a process. If you feel the desire to correct a player but have no idea what the player's intent was beforehand, you are only telling them what you would have done in that situation. The first step for acquiring a skill is performing the skill, then performing it well. The drawback in UWH is that when someone new is doing well, this is usually the end of the opposition's generosity. The rookie, even after a year or two is still learning the basics; the next step is to learn to do it at speed, followed by at speed while fatigued. After a year or three, the player is no longer considered a rookie and is fair game for everyone to take on without having learned to perform the skill at speed while fatigued and now under pressure. They have little hope of doing these things consistently.
The sport would benefit from a close look at the impact of National teams cycles that never seem to end. We need to look at why some players within our National team try-out process haven't travelled out of State/Province for their own club team in a decade. The National team players are often more closely aligned with their friends on their travel teams than with the rookies within their own clubs. Added to that is the high level elite players who are not trying out but, instead of building a club team, whore themselves out to join elite players from other clubs to be a medal contender. These stacked whore teams then compete against the National teams but effectively ensure most club teams will not be successful.
Rookies join the sport for health, fitness, and social support. That is hard to achieve if your best players are spending their time, money, and resources on their own national team aspirations and the friends they have from those teams. If you are a current player and feel that your best UWH friends are National stream players from other clubs then that is a problem for club development. We need our organizing associations and groups to put the health and growth of clubs before the next event on the horizon. We need to discourage Provinces and States from putting together 'regional teams' to compete at tournaments because that makes it difficult to develop good club players.
We need our National teams to run clinics around tournaments and ask the elite players to give back by recruiting and building club teams for the actual events. The only way a rookie turns the corner is by attending major tournaments, not local or one day potlucks. They get better by playing with the elite players with medals and club pride on the line.
Skill acquisition is a process. If you feel the desire to correct a player but have no idea what the player's intent was beforehand, you are only telling them what you would have done in that situation. The first step for acquiring a skill is performing the skill, then performing it well. The drawback in UWH is that when someone new is doing well, this is usually the end of the opposition's generosity. The rookie, even after a year or two is still learning the basics; the next step is to learn to do it at speed, followed by at speed while fatigued. After a year or three, the player is no longer considered a rookie and is fair game for everyone to take on without having learned to perform the skill at speed while fatigued and now under pressure. They have little hope of doing these things consistently.
The sport would benefit from a close look at the impact of National teams cycles that never seem to end. We need to look at why some players within our National team try-out process haven't travelled out of State/Province for their own club team in a decade. The National team players are often more closely aligned with their friends on their travel teams than with the rookies within their own clubs. Added to that is the high level elite players who are not trying out but, instead of building a club team, whore themselves out to join elite players from other clubs to be a medal contender. These stacked whore teams then compete against the National teams but effectively ensure most club teams will not be successful.
Rookies join the sport for health, fitness, and social support. That is hard to achieve if your best players are spending their time, money, and resources on their own national team aspirations and the friends they have from those teams. If you are a current player and feel that your best UWH friends are National stream players from other clubs then that is a problem for club development. We need our organizing associations and groups to put the health and growth of clubs before the next event on the horizon. We need to discourage Provinces and States from putting together 'regional teams' to compete at tournaments because that makes it difficult to develop good club players.
We need our National teams to run clinics around tournaments and ask the elite players to give back by recruiting and building club teams for the actual events. The only way a rookie turns the corner is by attending major tournaments, not local or one day potlucks. They get better by playing with the elite players with medals and club pride on the line.
This is a written call to action to stimulate conversation around solutions to grow this sport. I understand many of the players involved at the top of the sport may feel resentful and point to how much they give (and many do) BUT the overall success of our sport is 100% based on our ability to recruit and retain a larger player base and if our best players don't step up, who can.
