With the fall sports season at its end, the water polo team, who remained diligent through a tough season, are hoping their team of fresh faces will continue to grown and improve their game.
Captain Tate Anderson said the team (of which two thirds of their athletes are in their first year) will need to train more if they are to hold strong against other teams in the league.
“With all the younger swimmers we have, most of the teams we face are much bigger than we are,” Anderson said. “I’m hoping to see more strength in the pool, more stamina, and more comfort in the water, which will all come with more experience.”
Anderson, who has been playing polo for many years, said the team’s youth will be their advantage in the long run.
“I think that will ultimately set us up for the future really well, with all this time they have to continue their polo careers and sharpen their abilities,” Anderson said. “We haven’t won any varsity games this year, but we have a lot of fun here, and I’m excited for their future,” Anderson said.
Among these new faces is head coach Anthony Woods, a father of one of the upperclassmen who has just finished his first season on deck, and said he dealt with the same inexperience that most of the team struggled with.
“I’d never played water polo, and I had to learn the game alongside the players and try to coach them,” Woods said. “It’s hard to learn a game that moves as fast as this type of game, and getting all the signals and plays memorized.”
However, Woods said that before everything, it is important for the players to be able to work together and function as a single unit, which is something that the polo team thrives in.
“These are a great group of guys, they exemplify everything that I as a coach would want out of a team,” Woods said. “They are all inclusive, they work with each other, and they care about each other. Learning and coaching this sport at the same time would have been near impossible without this environment to work in.”
Freshman and rookie polo player Merun Subhas said that this team and the atmosphere they create are what made him continue to work hard to try and better learn the sport.
“I literally almost drowned my first practice,” Subhas said. “But not once during the season did these guys give up on me or stop pushing me or expect any less than what everyone else was putting out. It’s only a matter of time before all this hard work will pay off for us.”
