Rule Amendments for CMAS

Several issues here:
1) none of the safety equipment we use is 'designed' for our sport - hand, ears, mouth/teeth protection.

2) no one in US has lost tooth/teeth wearing the external guard we use. There are very few safety devices in use - water polo caps, polo cap ear guards, wrestling headgear for ears; hand protection varies greatly; internal guards are made by couple of companies (boil and bite) or can be custom made but VERY expensive in US ($500). Some players find internal guards interfer with breathing and snorkel, some do not.

US adapted the street hockey guard for underwater hockey - it is a 'hockey' mouthguard. I've seen some homemade items as there aren't any professional external guards out there (except the street hockey ones) that can be adapted AND do not pose a danger to other players. I am not personally opposed to other types, difficulty is reliability and validity. I would suggest anyone interested, develop and trial a guard or two (again double criteria - protect mouth/teeth and not dangerous to others), and then bring data to the world.

3) any rule can be changed at a rules meeting or even between meetings; there will be a rules meeting in less than 6 months. I just requested changes ....... perhaps your country would like to make a proposal????????????

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Carol Rose

sorry i've got to point this out carol...

the mouthguard that tan uses and at the moment is not allowed to use IS specifically "designed" for our sport... that is the whole point.


also, you fail to notice that waterpolo caps happen to be designed to protect the ears from impacts, which is all that we need in the same way that socks are designed to keep the feet warm and is all a football player needs in that department.

how exactly you figure that there is no hand protection out there that is "designed" for our sport is utterly beyond me, but then again maybe most of the players you have seen lately have been swimming round with cricket gloves... ?

probably a useful thing is if you, preaching a say for all and flexibility on behalf of WAA, (which although you say does not yet exist is nonetheless plastered all over all the official websites that used to say CMAS and also, if you haven't noticed, HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE UWH WIKIPEDIA ENTRY in a quiet way... and when is wikipedia ever wrong?) were to have a chat with hendo, who has previously said that this issue is pretty much inflexible.

maybe you guys can come to some form of WAA consensus taking both views into account. possible?

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

i have a glove designed specificially for uwh in my gear bag at the moment...

i lost a tooth wearing the mouthguard...
well, i didn't loose it, it just died and had to be root canaled.
very expensive excersise.
dont' know how people play with an internal mouthguard though. need more air. but i sstill play with an external one none the less, even though it doesn't really work for me. lesser of two evils, and better than none at all.

you should be able to use any sort of mouthguard as long as it protects you, and doesn't harm other players in the water (kind of like the snorkel rule - no hard ones with sharp edges). keep it flexible. it's not a professional sport - as much as we'd like it to be. the simpler, the better. there are a lot of players out there and they're all very different. dont' put everybody into the same box, put a lid on it, and suffocate everybody.

same should go for sticks and gloves and fins - loose parameters, safety first.

sorry, seem to have a real bug about it.

go the individual.

You bang a tooth hard enough and often not even 'hard enough' and it can die, but it was not knocked out which is my point. Teeth are my out of water business; my field of expertise.

Also I was not clear, and after being to hard on Carl for lack of clarity - tisk tisk - I should have said 'commercially made.'

There are liability issues in US for 'homemade' stuff as there is no quality control, etc. Part of the difficulty is the safety and quality issue that is put on the referees shoulders when a large variety of homemade mouth guards show up. Snorkels are basically the same and only issue is danger to other players. But mouth guard protection cannot be judged prior to useage, and the field of play is not a good place for such experiments.

I have no stake in the issue by the way. US does do a service by purchasing the Mylec guards at the minimum order of 6000 (that's a hunk of change) and making them available at a very reasonable price. They generally work very well, are safe (rounded and smooth) and sturdy.

UW Hockey has far fewer safety rules and regulations than most well known sports, and safety has to be primary or we lose pools and insurability.

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Carol Rose

Yes, but if you had lost the tooth and needed a bridge, it would have cost 3x as much.

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Carol Rose

lucky indeed

in relation to external mouthgaurds i dont think they are as safe as they are made out to be. I lost 2 front teeth at trans tasmans this year with an external mouthguard and have since converted to an internal. Once you get used to it its not to bad.

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always try to be modest and be proud out it!!