Water polo in the context of Erik Bergvall

A team sport is a type of sport where the fundamental nature of the game or sport requires the participation of multiple individuals working together as a team, and it is inherently impossible or highly impractical to execute the sport as a single-player endeavour. In team sports, the cooperative effort of team members is essential for the sport to function and achieve its objectives. The objective often involves teammates facilitating the movement of a ball or similar bob in accordance with a set of rules in order to score points. Examples are basketball, volleyball, rugby league, rugby union, water polo, handball, lacrosse, cricket, baseball, and the various forms of football and hockey. These sports emphasize teamwork, strategy, and coordination among team members while competing against opposing teams to achieve a common goal. Team sports do not include individual or individual-to-team events within a sport.

In many team sports, defense (American spelling) or defence (Commonwealth spelling) is the action of preventing an opponent from scoring. The term may also refer to the tactics involved in defense, or a sub-team whose primary responsibility is defense. Similarly, a defense player or defender is a player who is generally charged with preventing the other team's forwards from being able to bear down directly on their own team's goalkeeper or goaltender. Such positions exist in association football, ice hockey, water polo and many other sports.

The Bergvall system was a variation of the traditional knockout tournament system.

It was used at the 1912, 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics after being devised by Erik Bergvall, a Swedish water polo player, journalist and sports official who wanted to improve on the traditional knockout method used in Olympic competitions.

The Royal Dutch Swimming Federation (Dutch: Koninklijke Nederlandse Zwem Bond, “KNZB”) is the official governing body for swimming, in the Netherlands. The federation overlooks several other sports including competition swimming, open water swimming, water polo, diving and synchronized swimming. The federation is based in Nieuwegein and affiliated with the national sports body NOC*NSF. The responsibility of the KNZB is to organize and track various events. When a new organization from one of the water sports joins the KNZB they can participate in the competitions governed by the KNZB. They will then be placed on a ranking list.

An Olympic-size swimming pool is a swimming pool which conforms to the regulations for length, breadth, and depth made by World Aquatics (formerly FINA) for swimming at the Summer Olympics and the swimming events at the World Aquatics Championships. Different size regulations apply for other pool-based events, such as diving, synchronized swimming, and water polo. Less onerous breadth and depth regulations exist for lesser swimming competitions, but any "long course" event requires a course length of 50 metres (164 ft 0.5 in), as distinct from "short course" which applies to competitions in pools that are 25 metres (82 ft 0 in) in length (or 75 feet (22.9 m) in the United States). If touch pads are used in competition, then the distance is relative to the touch pads at either end of the course, so that the pool itself is generally oversized to allow for the width of the pads.

An Olympic-size swimming pool is used as a colloquial unit of volume, to make approximate comparisons to similarly sized objects or volumes. It is not a specific definition, as there is no maximum limit on the depth of an Olympic pool. The value has an order of magnitude of 1 megaliter (ML). Some style guides caution against the hyperbole of describing any relatively large pool as "Olympic-size[d]".

Water sports or aquatic sports are sports activities conducted on waterbodies and can be categorized according to the degree of immersion by the participants.

The World Aquatics Championships, formerly the FINA World Championships, are the World Championships for six aquatic disciplines: swimming, diving, high diving, open water swimming, artistic swimming, and water polo. The championships are staged by World Aquatics, formerly known as FINA (Fédération internationale de natation), the international federation recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for administering international competitions in water sports. The championships are World Aquatics' largest and main event traditionally held biennially every odd year, with all six of the aquatic disciplines contested every championships. Dr. Hal Henning, FINA's president from 1972 through 1976, and their first American President, was highly instrumental in starting the first World Aquatics Championships, and in retaining the number of swimming events in the Olympics, which gave an advantage to nations with larger, more balanced swim teams.

The championships were first staged in 1973 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, with competitions held in swimming, diving, synchronised swimming and water polo. In 1991 open water swimming was added to the championships as a fifth discipline. In 2013 high diving was added to the championships as a sixth discipline. In 2017 the synchronised swimming discipline was renamed to artistic swimming.

The World Aquatics Athletes of the Year (formerly FINA Athletes of the Year) is a set of awards presented by World Aquatics (International Swimming Federation) and the FINA Aquatics World Magazine. Each recognises excellence in five categories of aquatic sports: swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, water polo and open water swimming. The award was inaugurated in 2010.

Bud Spencer (born Carlo Pedersoli; 31 October 1929 – 27 June 2016) was an Italian actor, professional swimmer and water polo player. He was known for action-comedy and spaghetti Western roles with his long-time film partner and friend Terence Hill. Spencer and Hill appeared in 18 films together.

In his youth, Bud Spencer was a successful athlete and swimmer for Gruppo Sportivo Fiamme Oro. and for Società Sportiva Lazio Nuoto. He represented Italy twice at the Summer Olympics. He obtained a law degree and registered several patents. Spencer also became a certified commercial airline and helicopter pilot, and supported and funded many children's charities, including the Spencer Scholarship Fund.

Short-handed is a term used in ice hockey and several related sports, including water polo, and refers to having fewer players on the ice during play, as a result of a penalty. The player removed from play serves the penalty in the penalty box for a set amount of time proportional to the severity of the infraction. If a goaltender commits a minor infraction, another player who was on the ice at the time of the penalty serves, often but not necessarily the team captain.

The penalized team is said to be on the penalty kill, abbreviated as "PK" for recording purposes, while their players are in the penalty box. The opposing team is usually referred to as having an "advantage" until the penalized player returns to play. This situation is often called a power play for the opposing team. The advantage largely comes from having an additional player, making it impossible for the short-handed team to defend every player one-on-one and, in the event the short-handed team is making an offensive run, the team on the power play can double-team one of the short-handed team's players while still covering everyone else.

In many team sports that involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie, or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting opposing shots on goal. Such positions exist in bandy, rink bandy, camogie, association football, Gaelic football, international rules football, floorball, handball, hurling, field hockey, ice hockey, roller hockey, lacrosse, ringette, rinkball, water polo, and shinty, as well as in other sports.

In most sports that involve scoring in a net, rules apply to the goalkeeper that do not apply to other players. These rules are often instituted to protect the goalkeeper from being a target for dangerous or even violent actions. This is most apparent in sports such as ice hockey and lacrosse, where goalkeepers are required to wear special equipment like heavy pads and a face mask to protect their bodies from the impact of the playing object (e.g., a ball or puck).

Montenegro competed as an independent nation for the first time at the Olympic Games at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Montenegro was the youngest nation to participate in the 2008 Summer Olympics.Athletes from Montenegro participated in three different events. In individual events, the new nation had representatives in boxing and shooting. Boxer Milorad Gajović represented his country in the heavyweight division, while Nikola Šaranović competed in 10 m air pistol and 50 m pistol precision shooting events. In team competition, Montenegro competed in water polo. The Montenegro national water polo team won the 2007 European Water Polo Olympic Qualification Tournament to qualify for the Olympic games.

Montenegro failed to win any medals, but did advance to the bronze medal match in men's water polo, where they lost to Serbia, 6–4.

Diving was first introduced in the official programme of the Summer Olympic Games at the 1904 Games of St. Louis and has been an Olympic sport since. It was known as "fancy diving" for the acrobatic stunts performed by divers during the dive (such as somersaults and twists). This discipline of Aquatics, along with swimming, synchronised swimming and water polo, is regulated and supervised by the International Swimming Federation (FINA), the international federation (IF) for aquatic sports.

An Olympic-size swimming pool is a swimming pool which conforms to the regulations for length, breadth, and depth made by World Aquatics (formerly FINA) for swimming at the Summer Olympics and the swimming events at the World Aquatics Championships. Different size regulations apply for other pool-based events, such as diving, synchronized swimming, and water polo. Less onerous breadth and depth regulations exist for lesser swimming competitions, but any "long course" event requires a course length of 50 metres (164 ft 0.5 in), as distinct from "short course" which applies to competitions in pools that are 25 metres (82 ft 0 in) in length (or 75 feet (22.9 m) in the United States). And If touch pads are used in competition, then the distance is relative to the touch pads at either end of the course, so that the pool itself is generally oversized to allow for the width of the pads.

An Olympic-size swimming pool is used as a colloquial unit of volume, to make approximate comparisons to similarly sized objects or volumes. It is not a specific definition, as there is no maximum limit on the depth of an Olympic pool. The value has an order of magnitude of 1 megaliter (ML). Some style guides caution against the hyperbole of describing any relatively large pool as "Olympic-size[d]".