Twenty-five years have gone since Switzerland last sent a women’s team to compete at the European Underwater Rugby Championships but they are making a comeback.
The Swiss women have a national team again. After placing dead last at both the Copenhagen 1991 World Championships and the Gothenburg 1997 European Championships, the Swiss women gave up and disappeared from CMAS competition. Now they are set to take part in the European Championships in Stavanger next month. Next year they plan to continue on to Canada, to test themselves at the 2023 Montreal World Championships.
Dennis Rockenbach, an experienced German player from Mainz, became head coach around a year ago. He has devoted three weekends to Switzerland’s national camps and the positive results show.
Limited size
Helvetia, a pick up team that included many but not all Swiss national team candidates, entered the Amager Ladies Cup in Denmark last month (April). They performed well, losing only one match the entire tournament. During round robin play, they even managed to tie the eventual champions (Amager) 0-0. Their final rank was third after they prevailed over Barcelona 1-0 in the bronze placement match.
Amager attracted tough teams with a significant proportion of national team players. So, it was an important test for the Swiss even if Helvetia was not necessarily the squad that will eventually go to Stavanger.
“I’m very proud of my team, it’s been a tough few months with even tougher training camps,” said Rockenbach, whose first goal was to raise understanding of team play.
The total number of women players in the country is basically enough to provide enough personnel for one team. And given that Switzerland’s female rugby players have no domestic women’s league, playing exclusively with and against women was completely new for some.
Since leaving CMAS competition, the dream of a national team has been sustained at Berlin’s Champions Cup, where the Swiss women did come together once a year. It was there in 2019 that Rockenbach first considered coaching them. He agreed to watch some of their matches and saw their potential. At first he acted as an assistant coach to Leonid Roupyshev. Later when Roupyshev stepped down, he took over the job.
“I thought I could get more out of the ladies than they were showing at the time [I first saw them]. My motivation [in taking the coaching job] is to watch my team play and see them trust themselves and enjoy the game.”
The existence of a national team has helped motivate clubs to recruit new women players.
“The Amager Cup was my very first competition,” explained Cristina Arioli, a 24-year-old goalkeeper from the club Unterwassersport Zurich.
Arioli, a former Swiss junior national team synchronized swimmer, only began playing rugby last autumn after a try new sports week at her university.
“Since I am a huge fan of water, I tried out all water sports I could find, including underwater rugby. I really liked it so I stayed.”
Arioli’s rapid progression in the sport offers partial clarification to Switzerland’s strengths and weaknesses. At the Amager Cup, Helvetia was very good at holding on to the ball but had difficulty scoring. So although Rockenbach has been successful at instilling team play routines, the mechanics of moving around the basket to score will require more drilling and match experience. Rockenbach commented:
“My team is aware that one rarely scores goals with individual actions. If we score goals, that’s because we are at the goal as a team and we hit it together.”
Arioli and her teammates appreciate their coach’s efforts:
“Dennis, as a coach, is very enthusiastic and puts a lot of effort into our practices and development as a team… he has a lot of experience in underwater rugby and knows how to pass on his knowledge.”
Personal responsibility
As in many other countries, Swiss players only have underwater rugby practice a couple of times a week. So, responsibility for fitness and strength training routines fall upon the individual player. Arioli’s teammate Judith Buchli, a 29-year-old goalkeeper, is an example. During winter she skis or runs. In the summer she turns to cycling, swimming and mountain biking.
Buchli, who took up underwater rugby when a surfing pal happened to watch a game and told her about it, has been to Champions Cup twice, in 2018 and 2019.
She agreed that Amager was an important opportunity “because we are just a few women who play underwater rugby in Switzerland and we are use to having men on our team and as opponents. Also it was good to see what we worked for and where we need to improve.”
Her personal ambition in rugby is to cut her reaction time.
“I need to be faster in my mind, read my teammates and the game more so we can achieve opportunities together,” she explained.
“And for the team, I guess we need to keep the game in a flow.”
The Swiss woman have a tendency to get bogged down in surface scrums, but if they can achieve more dynamic underwater movement, they may prove a difficult opponent in coming competitions.
“You know, we don’t have any pressure. Our biggest goal is to participate and do our best,” said Rockenbach. “It doesn’t matter which place we’re playing for.”