Underwater Rugby Champs Hold Their Breath

Masked, fin-footed competitors traversed a chlorinated underworld in search of a salt water ball — and a chance to fly abroad to compete for a world cup.

That was the scene — captured for spectators on a big screen — as 12 teams competed in a national underwater rugby championship held Friday through Sunday at the Hamden High School pool.

Snorkel-faced athletes of all ages from California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts and New Jersey traveled to Connecticut over the weekend for the chance to compete in the championship within both women’s and co-ed divisions. They competed for the opportunity to travel to Berlin, Germany, and fight for the worldwide cup while also celebrating the chance to return to home waters following a two-year pandemic pause.

The Independent sat in on a Saturday match to observe the CT Makos women — two-time national champions, in 2018 and 2019 — fight against a Florida-based team with the title of ​“Tarpon-Kraken.” The team draws players from New Haven students to Hamden professors.

Here’s how the game works: Each team has 12 players with four forwards, four defenses, four goalies, and three substitutes. They seek to pass along a weighted ball filled with salt water into the opposing team’s basket. The matches last for 30 minutes with two 15-minute halves. Players wear flippers, goggles, masks, snorkels and special swim caps with built-in protections to defend their ear canals from water pressure.

Racing underwater requires competitors to hold their breath for long periods of time. They resurface only to get air or swap out with another teammate. The rest of the action is displayed on a monitor.

“Vamanos Makos!” teammates cheered from the stands each time the ball went into the Krakens’ basket.

The Makos women dominated, crushing the Krakens 11 to 0. 

After three days of swimming as swiftly as the sharks they’re named after, the women finished in second out of five teams total, falling just short of the opportunity to go global to the New Jersey Hammerheads.

“The ball dominance was on the CT Makos’ side,” Assistant Coach Laura Bedoya assessed. ​“The New Jersey team did a counterattack,” ultimately granting the opposing tri-state team a trip to Germany thanks to a single goal.

The sport’s worldwide championships bring national winners to Germany, where the game originated. The sport has since gained popularity in Latin America — and spread slowly to the states through the Latino community.

Bedoya, 23, has flown to Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Berlin as both a player and coach of underwater rugby. But it is in the lap lanes of Hamden High’s pool that she has discovered a whole new world.

Crowds and contestants have Coach Jose Bedoya, Laura Bedoya’s father, to thank for bringing underwater rugby to the Connecticut stage from Colombia. 

Jose Bedoya and his wife sought out a chance to snorkel and goal upon immigrating to East Haven in the 1990s. They found the closest team was located in Boston.

They started a small business named Makos Aquatic Recreation, which also offers swimming lessons out of the Hamden High pool. The Bedoyas founded the CT Makos team in 2003. Now Jose Bedoya leads the open division while Laura Bedoya serves as both a player and the assistant coach for the women’s division.

Under Bedoyas’ leadership, the women’s Makos division made it to the world championship twice in 2018 and 2019 before pulling out of the pool due to the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020.

Beyond their status as national champions, Bedoya said the team is like ​“family.” Literally.

“A lot of the players on the women’s team are either cousins or sisters,” she said. Just as Bedoya got involved in the sport through her dad, many of her teammates are first-generation Americans whose parents played the game before them.

Roughly 80 percent of the players on the CT Makos, Bedoya said, are Latino. Many more are specifically of Colombian descent. The same holds true for many of the teams across the country represented in this weekend’s competition.

“Those who aren’t family, we take them in as if we are,” Bedoya added.

Although practices are often guided primarily through Spanish instruction, 14-year-old Suffield Academy student Adrianna Bailey-Stewart said she has had no problem following along despite her lack of fluency.

Bailey-Stewart, a defender for the CT Makos, has been playing underwater rugby since she was 10.

“I don’t speak Spanish that well, like very little,” she said. ​“So them being able to translate to me and keeping me in the know just felt like they really wanted me to be here and they really want me a part of the team. Me getting better and playing with them so intensely and so much has just caused me to really love the sport,” she said. 

In addition to promoting a common culture or, in Bailey-Stewart’s case, a second language, the game helps with stress management and mental clarity.

​“The reason why I play this is because it’s the only way and the only place that I can let all my stress out,” said Johan Bermudez, a 37-year-old goalie for the Makos.

“This is the only sport where you cannot scream. You cannot yell at people. So it’s just stress free. And all my stress stays right under the water.”

That message resonated with teen teammates as well. Metropolitan Business Academy student Genesis Guillen, 14, said that ​“when you go down, it’s like, you kind of forget about everything else … Like in sports outside of the water, you can hear people cheering you on or saying hate stuff to you. But when you’re in the water, it’s like you can focus on the game.”

The game ​“allows you to be very mindful and very present,” Bedoya said.

The water provides solitude — and connection.

Bedoya continues to play on the women’s team since taking on the role of coach.

“I love the water — it’s like I’m in a different world, a different reality,” she said. ​“When you’re submerged under water, it’s like time stops.”

As coach, she’s enjoying another view: watching the children of past players ascend.

“Community is a value system — it’s something I grew up with,” she said. 

“Now, there’s a new generation of underwater rugby players” who will inherit that sense of solidarity, she said.