The boys water polo team starts training for this year’s season in 2-3 weeks. The players and coaches are getting ready to begin practicing for the upcoming series of games in the spring.
Last year, the varsity team fared favorably with a record of 20-5. The junior varsity team finished at 10-5, and the freshman/sophomore were less successful at 2-7.
Boys and girls both have multiple opportunities to get in some pre-season training. Intramural water polo was held at the Northfield campus from Feb. 11 – Feb. 15, and again from Feb. 19 – Feb. 22. These were open to any students.
For water polo players, Glenbrook Aquatics will be offering Master level scrimmages from 8:30-10:00 on Monday nights at Glenbrook North, and on Wednesday nights from 8:30-10:00 at Glenbrook South.
Dan Daly, assistant head coach for Boys’ varsity water polo, said that “the biggest games [this season] we will be working hard for are Loyola and Evanston. Those are, historically, our biggest rivals.” The team should have a shot of getting the win for these games though, since year by year, the number of players increases due to the sport’s growing popularity.
“In the 12 years that I’ve coached here, I’ve noticed a significant increase in interest of water polo,” said Daly. “When I first started, there was maybe around 35 boys on the whole team. Now, there’s almost double that.”
The team started practice on Monday, Feb 21. In addition to basic swimming drills and practice scrimmages, there is a likelihood of having some stranger pre-game techniques to psych up the players. Head coach Dave Goodspeed has creative strategies to engage his players.
“He’s got some pretty interesting ways of getting the guys prepared,” said Daly. “One time he showed them the main bombing scene from Apocalypse Now and then gave a big inspirational speech to follow it up.”
Some of the water polo numbers do come from the swim team, though not as often as some would think. While most students choose to swim year-round, a portion of students choose to do swimming for half of the year and participate in water polo for the other half of the year, which allows for a greater diversity of students playing the game.
Because the sport is incredibly reliant on the connected teamwork of all the players, simply practicing and scrimmaging isn’t enough to creating a winning team.
“The boys often have get-togethers outside of practices, which is important to the team dynamic. The group bonding is key to finding and determining goals for the season,” said Daly.
One of these goals, according to junior Jack Vorwald, is getting to state.
“It came down to a disappointing loss against Loyola last year, but this year, their seniors have graduated so they’ve lost a lot of their best players. And all the juniors that were on our starting team last year are now seniors, and they’re better than ever.”
“We’re going to have to face a lot of tough teams this year like Fenwick and Lyons, It’s going to be a big challenge, but I think we’re going to do extremely well,” continued Vorwald.
“It’ll definitely be a stronger season than last year,” said Vorwald.