Dear underwater hockey… 3 years ago, I did not even know your existence, today it’s thanks to you that I make my living ! 3 years ago, I didn’t know about the underwater hockey family, now I am part of it. Alan Blake was a stranger to me 3 years ago, today I thank him for helping to invent you. Even if I did not play a lot of times, i had to honour you.
On this gray afternoon of autumn, far from the pools, hugs, handshakes, squirts of water around the pools, it’s hard for me to explain to you how you changed my life. How you changed the lives of hundreds, thousands of people around the world. It’s crazy how a sport as little known as you can be loved so much by its practitioners. All over the world, you are what links human beings together. You made sure to create friendships between a French and a New Zealander, between a South African and a Colombian, between a Japanese and a Canadian. Do you realize that without you, friendships, couples, discussions would never have taken place? Do you know that without you, parents would never have spent so much time with their children? That brothers and sisters could never have been together every week, every month, every year to get together underwater?
Let’s talk about it, being together for so long and not being able to talk? Why have you done that, my dear underwater hockey? One more reason to say thank you, because, yes, thanks to you, hockey players have learned to communicate without even speaking to each other, thanks to you, hockey players know each other by heart, because you have made of team spirit the basis of yourself. Without a perfect understanding, impossible to win anything, without a perfect symbiosis underwater, impossible to score, impossible to rise to the surface with a smile … A smile, but before, a breath of fresh air, because yes, thanks to you, hundreds of hockey players have understood that taking a breath of fresh air wasn’t something that is repeated over and over again every day. Thanks to you, hockey players know what this act which keeps us all alive represents and its effect on our body.
Arriving into the hockey world, I thought at first, what kind of sect is this ! They all know each other, they use really special terms! What is the point of putting sharks in an aquarium? Fins in a swimming pool? You can’t see anything below, so how do you enjoy it from the surface? Today thanks to you I get to see a puck underwater, I try to make people like you even from the surface, long story short, I am also part of the underwater hockey sect. So keep moving forward, despite all the obstacles you will have to cross and continue to unite us around the pools, because when it’ll be time to take stock, I will not forget that you have allowed me to meet friends!
Dear underwater hockey… THANK YOU !!
