When McKenna Peters, psychology teacher, opened Final Forms to see her roster for boys water polo this spring, she was surprised to see only 13 boys listed. When practices began, only nine showed up.
In water polo, seven players from each team are in the pool at a given time. With only nine boys on the team, this means there will only be a maximum of two subs available at every boys water polo game, if every team member attends.
Peters is the assistant boys and girls water polo coach. Boys water polo lost 10 players from last year’s team. Seven seniors graduated, and three players didn’t return.
Because the team is smaller and not as experienced as previous years, boys water polo will only have a jv team this season.
Peters said because water polo is a no cut sport, she asked players to encourage their friends to join to boost numbers.
“There was a lot of peer pressure involved trying to get boys to join to make sure we made a team,” Peters said. “It was nervewracking, but I didn’t want to worry too much because I knew the guys that were coming back were going to be dedicated.”
To aid with this increased playing time, Peters said practices will focus on conditioning.
“The average game is like two miles of swimming, and you’re treading for seven minutes plus, so I’m always concerned about endurance,” Peters said.
Because there is only a jv team, boys water polo will not be able to enter the State competition this year. However, Peters said having a smaller team will be an overall positive experience for players because they will get increased play time and learn from experience.
“It’s one of those sports that you learn by doing, there’s only so much strategy you can talk about when you’re out of the water,” Peters said. “They’re going to get a lot more play time and they’re going to be able to play teams that are on their level, they’re going to be playing other jv teams.”
Shrey Sharma, sophomore, agrees.
“The good thing is that we get a ton of game time as well because last year with all the seniors most of us didn’t get too much game time,” Sharma said.
Sharma said he is concerned about what will happen if players get tired too quickly because there are only two subs. Sharma said this will likely impact upperclassmen more.
“Most of us have played at least a year, but there’s two freshmen that just started so they’re really inexperienced,” Sharma said. “So we’re going to have to be playing for pretty much the entire game, and it’s going to be really tiring.”
Freshmen Jude Lu and Nico Speziali are the only two subs at games, Lu said. This small number has changed the team’s strategy.
“We are just not focusing on trying to win the game, but trying to get ahead at the beginning of the game and stay ahead rather than focusing on beating the other team by a large amount of points,” Lu said.
Lu said he and Speziali are getting more experience in the pool, whereas if the team were larger they likely wouldn’t be playing as much as they do now.
Although Lu swims with Gateway Swim Club, he said that water polo is tiring in a different way.
“Swim it’s more like long distances and constantly working but not as hard, but this one’s more like working really really hard for those shorter periods of time,” Lu said.
Michael Rafferty, sophomore, said practices have adjusted to aid with this increased stamina.
“Practices now are just mainly conditioning to get ready to basically IRONMAN all the games,” Rafferty said.
However, Rafferty said he thinks the smaller team has a stronger bond.
“A lot of my friends stayed on the team, so that was nice,” Rafferty said. “It’s kind of a smaller group so I can hang out with them more.”
