Water Polo is a sport not that well known, at Kennedy High School, yet the school offers water polo, for both boys and girls, as a sport with people on the team who are passionate about what they do, even if much of the outside world doesn’t know what that is. Water Polo is a sport that resembles rugby on the water that is based on enormous strength as much as athletic skill.
Another way water polo can be described is as “a rigorous sport that requires endurance (treading water and sprinting constantly) and strength (pressing against other players),” said Christine Chung, one of the captains on the girls’ water polo team at Kennedy High School. Kennedy offers a water polo team for both girls and boys, giving students the chance to try water polo and see what it’s like.
“The objective is to score goals by throwing the ball into the opponent’s net, with one goal equaling one point,” stated by Dominick A. Hernandez Garcia, the other captain of the girls’ water polo team.
During a water polo game, the game is broken into four periods or quarters where each team has seven players in the water. Among the seven players there is a goalkeeper who blocks goals using two hands and who usually starts the offensive play with a long pass. For the rest of the six players, they are field players, but they all have different roles.
Hernandez Garcia reflected, “Field positions are fluid, but generally include wings, who stay on defense/passing while trying to get open water; drivers, who are on wings in order to be ready to drive into set for a ‘pass and shot’ method; points, who keep the ball to have everyone set up into their positions; and set, who typically are the strongest player; they are pressed against the chest of defense and try their best to score.”
All roles may sound complicated, but when you understand the way things work and everything then the game of water polo becomes more fun and interesting, according to the players.
So, what drives these Kennedy students to play a sport that gets little acknowledgement, partly based on the lack of understanding? In Chung’s words, “I did club swim previously and wanted to play a sport for my fall semester of school. My brother played before me, so I thought that I would try it out and enjoyed playing with my teammates and friends.”
And for Hernandez Garcia, she said, “I played water polo once when I was young, around seven, and I got my tooth knocked out. [I] decided to never play again. Then, when I got in high school, I was heavily encouraged to play, and I made varsity my freshman year and I fell in love with the sport. Truly grateful for gaining interest again.”
As of currently the girls team has an overall of three to two, with three being wins and two being lost. They have many more games to come. For boys water polo, their season is during the fall season, so they have their season right before the girls’ season which is during winter. The boys ended their season with an overall record of seven and seven.
