Are you a strong swimmer? Do you like making lifelong friends and playing games? Have you been thinking about joining a sports team at Conn? The women’s water polo team may be just the place for you.
With the spring sports season fast approaching, the women’s water polo team is one crucial piece away from being competition ready: a goalie. Being a sport primarily played on the West Coast, Conn is one of just five Division 3 schools with a varsity water polo team on the East Coast, and one of ten in the entire country. Because of this, recruiting is tricky, and the few goalie recruits opted to go elsewhere this year. So now, the team is turning to the Conn community to find their next superstar keeper to help this team make a strong showing at the CWPA championship this year in April.
Having little knowledge of water polo, I sat in on a captain’s practice last week. The game is a combo of hockey and soccer in a pool. There are 7 players (6 field players and a goalie) in the pool per team. All the players tread water when stationary, but for the most part, they are actively swimming to get the ball or to get open to be passed to. The only person who would be treading water for the majority of the game is the goalie.
During practice, the team started off with some passing drills and then switched to taking shots on goal. The players are taking turns playing goalie right now, but all of them prefer a field position. Honestly, I was pretty tired just watching them, but not once did I see anything but smiles and laughter from the team. That’s what makes a sport fun: the team environment that works through the good and the bad together.
Senior captain Maria Sell says an ideal goalie candidate would be “a swimmer who has some arm strength […] who can throw a ball, or at the opposite end, someone who has played goalie before, like in hockey or soccer, who can also swim.” Sell went on to articulate that a goalie doesn’t actually swim up and down the pool often, it’s primarily treading water while they wait to be shot on.
Sell has been on the team for 4 years and coaches high schoolers back home in California over the summers. She grew up in San Mateo, California, and began playing water polo in 4th grade. “It’s funny,” said Sell, “Coming here, there’s not a lot of people who have seen water polo. [The] West Coast is definitely the top water polo area. I’m from California. A lot of the freshmen are from California.” Sell told us the team is excited to travel to California during Spring Break to play some of the top teams in the country, including Occidental College, California Institute of Technology, and Chapman University.
The women’s water polo season starts practices on February 8 and their first set of games are at home on March 4 against Utica College and Carthage College. There are 7 experienced first-years joining the 14-woman squad, so the team is feeling positive about the season outlook.
If you’re interested in being the goalie for the women’s water polo team, contact Maria Sell (tsell@conncoll.edu) or Head Coach Matt Anderson (manders8@conncoll.edu). •
