December 13th, 2014 UWH Clinic

Hosted By: Chris Jolie
When: Saturday December 13th: 1pm-5pm
Where: Mount Hood Community College Aquatic Facility
Cost: $20.00 each (Hand your money to Kim Skukas in person or send paypal (no fees) to kskukas@gmail.com)

The Clinic will be split into (3) major activities. Starting with dry-land discussion, followed by skills and drills practice and finished with scrimmage play. Jolie is currently a Bend, OR resident and experienced hockey player from the East Coast. In fact, his parents met at a tournament in the 80’s… so you could say UWH is the reason he exists! The clinic is for everyone… No player is too “good” for skills practice or too new to try. There will be information for all to take away to help your game at practice or the next tournament!

PARTY immediately following at Josh’s place: It will be a potluck fish-fry (Josh will provide fish). BYOB and a dish to share! Crash space is available at local homes, please let Kim know if you need a Portland area place to sleep on Saturday night.

2014 PCC’s Las Vegas!

Hello all!

Your Team Oregon competed at the Pacific Coast Championship (PCC’s) in not-so-sunny Las Vegas last weekend.  After some excitement with thunderstorms resulting in pool evacuation, the tournament took off to a bumpy start.

We entered the highest divisional level of play “Elite” and were thoroughly beaten in Saturday’s games… it was a complete shut-out.  However, our moral remained high and we were able pick up skills as the day wore on.  Then with the arrival of Mark Swick on Sunday, we rallied to score several goals and ultimately tied two games.  Our final standing was 6th out of 7 teams in our division.  1st place was taken by the club Aletas, flying to PCC’s all the way from Medellin, Colombia!

The Oregon line-up:
back line – Chris Jolie, Michael Riccitelli, Joseph Danna and Mark Swick
forward line – Kim Skukas, Loren Mueller, Jim Erjavac, Josh Humbert, Cate Mitchell, Bill Letsom

A good time was had by all and if we keep up the training, Team Oregon will one day win the Elite division!

Excited for the next one,
Kim!

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Portland Mini-Tournament

The 4th Annual Portland Mini-Tournament was hosted Sunday, July 20th 2014.

The tournament lasted 3 hours and we played a new team setup: Each player was assigned to a Pod of 3 players. These pods were combined every game to create teams of 6 players and a round robin was coordinated between the team combinations. Each pod received 3 points for a game won, 2 for a tie and zero for a loss.

The winning Pod was: The “J-Team” Jorge, Jasmin and Jim. Congratulations J-Team!

Join us next year for a great day of hockey!

Pre-tournament, players gather.pre-tournament Seattle crowd

Sticks Up! Go!Jorge  308

2014 UWH Nationals – OR takes 2nd Place in the B Division!

We are proud to announce Team Oregon finished 2nd place in the B division.

We played a 3-3 formation and stuck with it all tournament. We have been training very hard to control the movement of the game: Choosing when to contain the threat from our opponents vs. when to open up the playing field through swings and drives. It was this ability paired with our hard-earned fitness that allowed us to beat teams with so many different styles of play.

Forward Lineup = Loren Mueller (Corvallis), Justin Azhocar (Corvallis), Lars Rukowski (Portland) and Kim Skukas (Portland)

Back Lineup = Mark Swick (Corvallis), Michael Riccitelli (Corvallis), Joey Danna (Newport) and Scott Dettloff (Portland)

The highlight of the weekend was our upset against the 3rd seed Chicago team on Sunday morning. We beat them 3-1 to qualify for the finals game after loosing to that same team 4-0 in the round robin games on Friday.

PCC’s is just around the corner…. Will you join team Oregon?

Manila Underwater Hockey Invitational 2014 save the date

Greetings from 3P!

We’re very excited to announce that this year’s invitational will take
place from November 20-23, 2014 (Thur to Sun), and as in the past
years, will be capped with a spectacular awards banquet then followed
by an optional 3 to 5-day tour of the islands.

The tournament is open to all skill levels with three divisions:
mixed, men and women. Pool venue, game format, fees and hotel
arrangements will be announced first quarter next year.

For inquiries, our official email is manilauwh2014@gmail.com.

Please share.

Thanks and happy holidays!

Chari Ongyanco
President
Polo Puck Pirates UWH Club
Manila, Philippines 

Msg from USA UWH

To All US Underwater Hockey Players,
 
Hockey in the US is what you make of it.  Quite a few people already give a significant amount of their time developing the sport, whether it’s as functional directors on a national basis, starting new clubs, helping with major tournaments and national teams, or just keeping your local club program going.  Great strides have been made in recent years to these efforts, but we need more.  If you have a lot or a little to give, any effort is appreciated.  Currently we’re seeking volunteers in two areas– Blogging and an Awards Committee.  Details below:
 
Bloggers needed for USA Underwater Hockey website
 
You have a lot to say?  You want somewhere to say it?  Now’s your chance!  We’re looking for people to blog for the USAHockey website.  We’d like to get some of the various leaders (coaches, refs, development people) to participate, but just about anyone is welcome.  All you need is some interesting perspective on hockey.  By this we mean we don’t want someone who just wants to bitch about what was wrong at their last practice (or national tournament), or babble on about the same thing over and over.  But you don’t have to be a coach, or a member of the Worlds team, or a Director.  If you have interesting thoughts or perspective about the game and are willing to share them on a regular basis (a monthly post is a typical need, but timeframes may vary), then there’s a place for you.
 
Note that this is not a place for a commercial operation to promote itself, or someone to repeatedly ask for money for this or that need.  And writings will, of course, need to be not “adult only” or NSW.  But with minor restrictions you’ll be able to write what you want.
 
Please contact Tyera Eulberg at Tyera_Eulberg@usauwh.com.
 

USA UNDERWATER HOCKEY Awards Committee

Give something back to your UWH community!

Seeking volunteers to join the new USA UWH Awards Committee. This committee will be responsible for identifying players, coaches, volunteers, and other members of the community who deserve special recognition through the form of awards.  This new committee is open to new ideas in terms of identifying awards to be given out and the selection process. All you need to have is a willingness to meet as a committee and respond to emails in order to form list of awards and selection criteria.

Please indicate your interest in joining the committee by Mar 15th. Based on expressed interest, the committee members will be appointed by the governing committee.

Please contact William Cleveland by email at william_cleveland@usauwh.com if interested.

2014 San Francisco Potluck

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Four OR UWH players traveled down to San Francisco for the Potluck. Michael, Mark, Lars and Loren were placed on different teams and battled it out underwater with folks from primarily the bay area and the West Coast.

And if the tournament wasn’t fun enough, the after party (I mean ‘banquet’) was super fun. Great food and great people!

Of special note, Mark Swick (a.k.a. ‘Swick Daddy’) was on the first place team for his third year in a row! Go Mark!

Also of note, Loren Mueller was signed off as a CMAS Level 1 Referee. That is two in OR now (that we know of, including Michael Riccitelli). (If you are here in OR and have been awarded your Level 1, 2 or 3 please let us know!)

OR young player

Oregon’s youngest new player – Ehren Mueller! Getting ready to work on drills with Michael R.