Club Highlight - Millalobos UWR, Chile

This week, I chatted to Maurice from Millalobos, Chile's leading (and only) UWR club! Check out their fantastic Instagram over at @millalobosuwrchile!

Alex Pelling (Host), joined by Maurice Menadier Stavelot.

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Alex: So first thing, you're from Mila Lobos, right. You messaged me via the Instagram and it's looking amazing. I'm a big fan. Walk us through what the club's like and what a typical session looks like for you.

Maurice: Okay, so we are a team for underwater rugby. It is called Millalobos, the name of the team, we are quite a young team. We started before the pandemic, but obviously because of the problems of the swimming pools were closed during that period, the team stopped a little bit and we restarted by the end of 2023, training again, and we have not stopped again since that time.

Maurice: And yes, we are the single team in Chile for underwater rugby. And our plan is try to motivate other teams, maybe like finswimming or swimming teams to start with this sport too. But yes, the idea is to support this team in understanding the way to train and also how the sport has to be played in the water.

Maurice: And for what our trainings are, normally we start typically with a swimming technique with or without fins, for sure, like some training of apnea, because we need to train that. If we come from swimming, for example, we are not used to do apnea so long as we need it for underwater rugby.

Maurice: And then depending on the day, because some days we have only one hour for training and other days we have two hours for training, we train the different positions like goalkeeper, defending or attack. And normally, for sure, at the end, we want to finish the training day with a short game between all the people that attend to the practice. And all this practice is led by our trainer, that is Telmo Rodríguez.

Maurice: He has played underwater rugby for more than 20 years. He is young. He is from Venezuela. He played for one local team that won the national cup for five years in a row. He also has the opportunity to represent Venezuela in the World Cup of 2015. And then he moved to Chile and he is now like our trainer and trying always to teach us how we have to play this game in a very good and competitive level.

Alex: Amazing, that's all fantastic. Thank you. Obviously, you mentioned a bit about your trainer's journey as well. How did you first discover underwater rugby?

Maurice: Yes, that is also an interesting story. In 2012, I moved to Germany to study my master's degree. And in my previous story, I used to do swimming, like race swimming. So when I started studying in Germany, I checked the courses or the sport activities that I could do at the university. And when I found that swimming was no place available for training, I continued reading the list of courses. And at that time, I already could understand that unterwasser rugby meant like underwater rugby.

Maurice: I say like, okay, it's a sport that I can play in the water, but it's rugby. So I read the description. And okay, I went to the first class. And then I never stopped going. At the beginning, I started training with the university team. And the hour after our training, it was the training of the city team, the Stuttgart team.

Maurice: So with the time they invited me to join to their training, then to play in the league. So at the end, I trained almost the three years that I lived in Germany from between 2012 to 2015, playing rugby. And then I came back to Chile. And this sport did not exist at that moment. But I think, more or less like 2017, this team started to train a little bit with some stops. But now we are very strong since 2023.

Alex: Amazing. So you literally helped bring it back to Chile. That's fantastic. I love stories like that. Okay, so we've kind of talked about this. And when you talk to people that haven't heard of underwater rugby before, how do you talk about it when you recruit new players? And what's the pitch like?

Maurice: Yes, yes. I know that I think for almost each underwater rugby player, it's difficult to explain the game. Because I say like, it's rugby, it's contact, and then you play underwater.

Maurice: So what is easy to tell is like, okay, let's think that we have two baskets under three to five meters in the swimming pool. And then we are six versus six, two goalkeepers, two defenders, two in attack. And there's one ball in the middle. And we we have to fight for it underwater to make the goal. And normally the people think like, okay, and do you use bottles like air bottles to breathe? No, you have to be go up and down, up and down until you make the goal.

Maurice: And yes, but that's like the first description. But I don't know if you have the opportunity to visit our Instagram, like it's @millalobosunderwaterrugby. And there we have a lot of information. We have done a huge campaign to have videos explaining the different positions, how we play underwater, how we train, and also to present to the people like the community that we have created in Millalobos that we are really enthusiastic to train a lot, to invite more people to join to our team.

Alex: Amazing. I obviously can see from the Instagram you developed a really nice kind of group of people. It looks like great fun. Okay. So I see you're hosting your first competition later on this month. It's very exciting. What are you looking forward to and what do you think makes a great competition?

Maurice: Yes. Okay. Like since we are the only team of underwater rugby, this is kind of an internal tournament that will be done 27th and 28th of June at the end of this month, in two weeks. And actually we invite other teams from outside, from Colombia, from Brazil, if they wanted to join our tournament, even if they could not assist with a full team, maybe only some players. So they could be mixed with our players. Again, it's like a, let's say, a friendly tournament.

Maurice: But the idea is to have the experience of how a match of underwater rugby is played. Okay. With all the rules, the changes, the referees, because it's training for all the team. There are some of the team that already have previous experience playing in tournaments, because many of our members come from Venezuela, and there was a strong league there a few years ago. But now we have done some internal tournaments, and this is the biggest one that we have organized. And the idea is that first, that all the new people that has joined the team have experienced how we play a formal match of underwater rugby, and also to start trying some teams, like already fixed teams, in a match.

Alex: Of course. I like how it's always interesting when people talk about how to help individual players develop those kind of skills, and have competitions to work towards, so that they can be focused. I really like that. Internal tournaments are a great idea. I like seeing that. It's cool. Obviously you've talked a bit about this, and your journey into this so far, but what are your aspirations for growing underwater rugby in Chile?

Maurice: Okay. We want to first establish underwater rugby as a sport in Chile. Because we know that we are in an early stage, but I think we could have a huge potential, since abroad there are leagues and world championships.

Maurice: Last year, 2024, sorry 2025, we decided to participate in a tournament in Colombia. Yes. So we had the opportunity to have a team. We went to Colombia. We invested in all our suits, all with the brand of Millalobos, like our uniforms. So we went there. It was also a friendly tournament. Eight teams participated. We were split in two teams of Chile, and at the end we got the second and the fourth place.

Alex: That's pretty good!

Maurice: So it was very good. It was our first experience in a tournament as a team.

So that's the experience that we want to introduce to the new members in this tournament in June. And the idea, what we want to do is try to participate in the world championship in Spain 2027. So that is something that the process starts after this tournament.

And also in this period, the idea is to start talking with other teams and try to arrange the opportunities to visit these teams in their swimming pools.

Maurice: We will bring our basket, everything to introduce them to what is underwater rugby and try to convince them and support them to start creating their own teams. So because then the idea is with new teams, we could have local tournaments and then it would be easier to motivate people from outside to come and participate in the teams here. But I think it's something for the long term, it's something that must be developed, but we are really committed to that.

Alex: That's really great. It is a great journey from when you started all the way to here and getting Chile into the world championship level. That’s fantastic. It's really cool. Thank you so, so much.

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