Water boy

In the United States, a water boy or water girl (sometimes spelled waterboy or watergirl) is someone who works on the sidelines and provides water or other drinks to athletes. The phrase has also been used to describe diminutive figures who serve another team or person in the business and political worlds, in a slightly derogatory manner (ex. "Bill is the CEO's water boy").

The position has a long history in athletics. In the 1869 New Jersey vs. Rutgers football game, one of the earliest American football games, an unnamed water boy is documented giving aid to a Rutgers player.

Among notable people who served as water boys was President Herbert Hoover, who was the Stanford Cardinal football's first water boy.

In college football, if a star player became injured or unable to play, he would be kept on the team as the water boy. This allowed the player to hold onto lucrative scholarships and stay on in college. The water boy would have also been used as a sort of ad hoc coach and advisor to certain struggling players through the game.

Although the term in modern American usage is now associated with sports, traditionally a water boy was a boy employed in traditional farming or industry to provide water for farm workers or machinery. In the cotton plantations, just as the modern manual harvesting or picking, the water carrier is in constant demand. This is documented in the folk song Waterboy "Water boy, where are you hidin'?" which is only the best known of many folk and plantation water-call songs.

Early agricultural machinery also needed a water boy to supply water for cooling. The introduction of steam threshing engines required large amounts of water to produce steam, and steam threshing engine teams would employ water boys to go from farm to farm with the engine team. This probably was behind the name "boy" on Waterloo Boy tractors from 1896, later products of Deere and Company. Waterloo Gasoline engines having recently introduced water pumps to replace the traditional farm water boy.

The railroads also employed water boys.

In India the water boy, pani-wallah or bhisti, was an occupation. The title character in Gunga Din (poem 1892, film 1939) is a water boy.

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