My arms are still sore. My lungs are still working overtime. Hitting the gym too hard? Nope. Playing water polo. Last week I was lucky enough to join the Sylvania Water Polo team during their Try It camp, and, let me tell you, this is an exhausting sport.
Watching Olympic water polo doesn’t quite do it justice. The athletes make it look effortless when it most definitely is not. The president of the Sylvania Water Polo Club, Erik Boyer, told me that players burn 3,000 calories in a match.
I’ve always been good at most sports I’ve picked up, but not here. I used muscles that I didn’t even know I had (and probably never had, to be honest). But what an amazing full body workout! I’m really not sure why people use the gym when they could just play water polo.
The Club
What a fun group of kids this is! Not once did they try to drown me—I could handle that on my own anyways— and they were all kind despite my inexperience. They also were incredibly nice to the new kids trying the sport for the first time through the Try It camp, helping them out with pointers and encouraging them. The Club’s outreach coordinator, Doev Joelson, stressed that the Club fostered community and teamwork.
The Club is open to all genders grades 6 through 12 who reside in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. Because it is a club sport, you don’t have to be a Sylvania resident or in the Sylvania school system. This helps build the community Doev was talking about by building friendships across school boundaries. Water polo, because it is not a super popular sport, is also a great way to earn a college scholarship.
The Club asks anyone interested to contact them, and you can attend three practices for free. They have practices most weeknights at 7pm, which you can learn more about in their upcoming calendar. The Club also has some big weekend tournaments coming up across the area, including trips to Columbus and Cincinnati. Their next game in Toledo is at St. Francis on Thursday September 9 at 6 pm.
Learning the ropes
Friday night at practice, Coach Alberto Almeida forced me to jump right into the deep end. I hardly got to interview anyone before finding myself in the pool with the rookies from the Try It camp, treading water with only my legs, using my arms to block and shoot with the ball.
By diving in myself, I learned a lot of rules that I didn’t know about water polo before. For instance, you can only hold the ball with one hand, and you can’t steal the ball when another player is holding it, but you can grab their shoulder to make their lives uncomfortable.
Then we scrimmaged. The ball was thrown in, and I swam as fast as I could back and forth. Constantly. I was exhausted and ready to quit. But then, a loose ball popped up in front of me, and I furiously dog-paddled my dad bod towards it. As I grabbed it and threw it blindly towards the goal, I swallowed a big mouthful of water. Somehow, it went in! I immediately quit, jumped out of the pool, and collapsed poolside. Parents laughed at me, butI didn’t care. I was triumphant. Triumphant and exhausted. You have to know how to quit while you’re ahead, right? Okay, maybe that’s not the message you want to send the kiddos, but it’s true for this journalist-turned-water-polo novice.
The Battle of the Border
I also attended a big invitational scrimmage—the Battle of the Border—with teams coming from Napoleon and Oakwood to play the Sylvania team. It was fun to watch. Some of the newbies from the Try It camp got to play in their first competitive matches. Just like Doev and Erik told me, it seemed to be more about community than competition. Some teams didn’t have enough players, so others would jump in and help them out. Even the coaches played when the numbers were low. Everyone was having fun while working every muscle in their body. It was “more of a family,” like Erik had told me the night before.
Coach Alberto tried to get yours truly back in the pool in a competitive match. Sorry, Coach, I hadn’t brought my swim trunks. Not to mention, I was still too exhausted from the previous night’s practice. Who won? Who cares; everyone had a blast and got some really good exercise.
Erik told me that his advice for interested students is: “Just come and try it. You might just fall in love with it.” I certainly did.
Learn more about Sylvania Water Polo and how to join on their website or Facebook page.
Above photos by Erik Boyer. All photos from the Battle of the Border scrimmage tournament.
