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Weird College Sports You’ve Never Heard Of

Sure we’ve all watched our fair share of football, hockey, baseball, and basketball games, but have you ever seen a game of octopush? How about elephant polo? These games are not what we’d call mainstream, although I bet they’d be pretty entertaining to see. OSQ has an annual dodgeball tournament. If you thought that was strange, read on…

 

Octopush is essentially underwater hockey. The game consists of people pushing each other around to get to the plastic covered 1.5 kilogram puck (definitely doesn’t float), hence the name. Players carry a black or white (depending on which team they are on) short stick which may not be longer than 350mm. They wear gloves and mouth guards like in hockey, but also wear snorkels and swimming caps. The game starts with all eight players on each team lined up at opposite ends of the pool. The puck is placed in the center of the pool, a whistle is blown and players race to gain possession. Players may go anywhere in the pool, there are no off-sides rules like in regular hockey. Play continues until either the referee calls some kind of penalty or a goal is scored. The goals are three meters wide at opposite sides of the pool. Octopush was started by divers in 1954, in England. The game came to North America in 1962 and is now played worldwide.

 

 

Elephant Polo is played all over the world. The winner of the World Elephant Polo Championship in December of 2007 was the Chopard Hong Kong team. It is exactly what it sounds like polo, polo played while riding elephants. Each elephant has two riders. One rider is the elephant’s master, and controls him. The other rider is the polo player. The field is three quarters of the length of a normal polo field because elephants are inherently slower than horses. Like polo as we know it, there are three players on each team. There are many rules to protect the elephants and minimize the risk of them getting hurt. The stick used to hit the ball is similar to a regular polo mallet, except it is between six and nine feet long. There are rules that prohibit elephants from lying down in front of the goal or picking the ball up with their trunks. Even the referees ride elephants during the game. The game consists of two seven-minute chukkas with fifteen minutes of rest between them. The team with the most goals wins.

 

 

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Tags: college sports, dodgeball, water polo, weird college sports

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