Water Polo

Seldom does water polo attract attention except when it is wetting the spectators who sit too close to the tank at swimming meets. But last week water polo loomed in the news. All winter the eastern colleges had been bickering about it. Last week the Intercollegiate Swimming Association announced that, in spite of complaints, it would not alter the rule making competition in water polo compulsory for member colleges. Immediately appeared editorials in the Yale Daily News and the Daily Princetonian. The Princetonian urged Princeton to resign from the Association. The News accused the Association of sidetracking a resolution to drop the game. Both spoke ominously of injuries, of unhealthfulness.

There are two kinds of water polo: the soccer game and the Old American Game. The soccer game is played with a hard leather ball fully inflated. Since it is difficult to drag the ball under water, spectators can see what is going on. This kind of water polo is comparatively harmless, though tiring. It is sanctioned by the Amateur Athletic Union, by western colleges and universities, and is played in the Olympics. The Old American is sanctioned by the Intercollegiate Swimming Association and played by Pennsylvania, Columbia, C. C. N. Y., Yale, Syracuse, Rutgers, Navy, Princeton. Recently Dartmouth resigned from the Intercollegiate Swimming Association to get out of playing it. The Old American is played with a half-inflated white rubber ball which is dragged under water as soon as it is tossed in and usually kept there until a goal is scored. Bubbles, choked cries, limbs eccentrically twisted rise to the surface. Faces reappearing after long confinement under water are sometimes empurpled, sometimes tombstone-pallid. Spectators find little science in it but enjoy the agonized grimaces of the players and the thought of what gouging, strangling, kneeing, biting, mauling and belly-thumping goes on subaqueously.

Claim defenders of the Old American Game: 1) No one has ever been killed at water polo. 2) There have never been serious injuries. 3) The players do not think it is too rough; complaints come from faculty members, medical advisers. 4) There is no harm in it if played strictly according to the rules. 5) "Accidental" blows lose much of their force under water.

Claim objectors: 1) No referee can see what happens under water; strange and harmful ways are used to make a man let go of the ball. 2) Referees have not enforced the rule that no player may be ducked until he is within four feet of the ball; general and immediate ducking for everyone in the game is a tradition. 3) Many players sustain injuries every year.

In a game 20 years ago between New York and Chicago for the U. S. water polo championship, the star of the Chicago team did not get out of the pool. His body was found at the bottom. He was revived with difficulty.

There was an epidemic of sinus trouble at Princeton last year. Almost all veteran water poloists have had their eardrums punctured at some time. Occasionally the eardrum fails to heal quickly and pus runs out of it. Mastoid may result. Suggested objectors: the Intercollegiate Swimming Association refused to alter its rule about the Old American Game because oldtime officials of the Association like to play it themselves in the New York Athletic Club, would hate to see it become outmoded.

Wrote Defender H. A. Gosnell, recently secretary of the Intercollegiate Swimming Association: "Objectors know nothing about the game . . . they shrink from putting their heads under water. . . . The hullaballoo in the student papers . . . is that of ignorant kids looking for a good news story. . . ."

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