Water Polo

Water Polo is a water-based version of Handball. Players use a ball weighing between 400g and 450g. They aim to score goals in a three metre wide, 90 centimetre high net that sits on top of the water.

Each team only has 30 seconds to score before the ball is passed to the opposition. As well as ball skills, players need stamina: you are not allowed to touch the bottom or the side of the pool during a match, which lasts for four periods of seven minutes each.

Water Polo was developed in Europe and the United States as two differing sports. When Water Polo first began, fighting between players was common, if not the norm. In 1897, New Yorker Harold Reeder formulated the first American rules for discipline, which were aimed at curbing the sport's more violent tendencies. 
Ultimately, the faster, less dangerous European style predominated, and today this is the form of the game practised universally.

Courses

British Swimming - Water Polo