Keith & Kyle Team USA U19 Underwater Hockey Worlds

Hey there! I'm Keith, a 14 year old underwater hockey player representing Team USA. I am currently the youngest player on the Team USA U19. Kyle, my brother, is a 16 year old underwater hockey player also representing Team USA U19 at the upcoming 2024 Underwater Hockey Age Group World Championship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Underwater hockey, or octopush, is a sport played underwater in a swimming pool. It involves two teams, each consisting of six players. The objective of the game is to maneuver a puck across the bottom of the pool and into the opposing team's goal using a small stick. Players wear snorkeling gear and use fins to swim underwater. Underwater hockey is a fast-paced and physically demanding sport that requires teamwork, strategy, and skill. I play for the SF Sea Lions team with roughly 15 other youth players with 10 others also being a part of the U19 team for the USA. On this team, we have many great coaches who have played or coached the USA team in the past. Our coaches have taught us many skills and helped us improve greatly over the years. The team of players have also gotten to know each other better over time and created a strong bond between each other. We are a strong team, and we would really appreciate your support.

Kyle and I have had a long history with the sport of underwater hockey. We first started underwater hockey with the SF Sea Lions in 2018, playing with most of the younger kids who were less experienced. We have met many of the excellent players who helped us improve. We greatly appreciate their efforts and support in coaching the young players, even when most of us were struggling to play at the beginning. Kyle and I both played for about 2 years until early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to stay home. During the pandemic, it was the hardest period for us and all other players, since we were unable to continue practicing underwater hockey that we greatly enjoy. Fortunately, we restarted playing underwater hockey again 2 years ago after the pandemic lift. However, we found ourselves in hardship since we had forgotten most of the skills we learned before the pandemic, meaning that we had to retrain from the beginning. That had taken us about a year to do before we were back in condition to play at a higher level. Since February of 2023, I had stepped up our game and became one of the better players of the team from being the lower level from the bottom. We would like to thank all of the coaches like Rhett Perkins, Holland Ja, David Quiec, and Oren Levy, and all the experienced players that helped and encouraged us to keep going and improving greatly.

Throughout these years, we have met many great players from all over the US and went to numerous tournaments and training clinics to improve. We have met players like Jesse Hocking, Lyndon Rive, and more. These players are the world champions of underwater hockey. We have gone to tournaments like US nationals in June of 2023, Pacific Coast Championships in October of 2023, and Orange County Cup in March of 2024. For the Orange County Cup recently, I organized a youth team to play against many different teams with much stronger and experienced players. It was not an easy job to organize a team for a competition, but to be honest, I really enjoyed it. Playing with the team over the weekend was lots of fun and a great learning experience. With all of these tournaments we have gone to and players we have met, we don't plan on stopping and will keep continuing to do more and more. We would like to become a much better player not only individually but also more importantly a great team player.

In the future, we plan on going to more tournaments all over the US and Canada with the SF Sea Lions team. Some of the tournaments we plan on sending a team to are Pacific Coast Championships, Battle @ Altitude, Atlantic Coast Championships, and more. There are also many training clinics that are all over the US. We are going to play in the US nationals again from June 21-23 and the world championships from July 16-27. These tournaments cost a lot of money to attend, and we would really appreciate all the support that you can give (money donation, spreading awareness, or anything that helps!). It has been our dream to organize teams to go to tournaments and also to go to the world championships, so it would be a lot of help to donate and make this possible. Please help us reach/surpass the goal of $10,000!

The funds will be used for the following costs:

Thanks again for all your support and time to read this.

Keith & Kyle

Photo by Yori Huynh