Young Utah State water polo club gears up for fall season
Water polo is a lot like soccer, except it is in the water, the players use their hands rather than their feet and it’s a little more violent.
“You get a little bruised sometimes,” Matt Ethington, a third-year member of the team and the captain, said, “but it’s worth it.”
Unbeknownst to many in the stands, what goes on under the water is pretty intense.
“It’s a really physical game,” Mike Steed, a fourth-year player, said. “Fouls are really common. Anything under the water is fair game because the refs can’t see it. You get speedo pulling, leg grabbing. Anything goes.”
Despite that, the players say they really enjoy playing.
“I like to swim and it’s a good way to stay in shape,” Ethington said. “A lot of times its easy to get too involved in school and you don’t get to do anything you want to do. It gives me an outlet from the stress of school.”
“I mostly do it to stay in shape,” Steed said. “It’s a lot of fun and I really enjoy it.”
Ethington said that Utah State’s water polo club team is about average, fourth out of the six teams in the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA).
Other teams in the division include the University of Utah, Arizona State, University of Colorado, Colorado State and the Colorado School of Mines.
“Among those teams we’re about the middle,” he said. “The University of Utah is really good, [but] we can beat Colorado State and Mines pretty good.
“We’re not the best, but we’re about average in our league.”
Ethington said that it is hard for students who are coming right out of high school to find somewhere to play. The team is mostly made up of athletes that played water polo in high school and are looking for something to do.
“We have a lot of experience,” he said. “Not a lot of college experience, but a lot of high school experience. In Utah, after high school, there’s no place for people really to go except Utah State and Utah as far as college-level water polo goes.”
Ethington and Steed both agree that the team has a lot of strengths. Steed said that the team has physically stronger players than the others in the area.
“We’re strong in the area of defense,” Ethington added. “That’s our strong point. We have two or three that are pretty fast. A lot of the new guys fresh out of high school are pretty fast.”
One thing that Ethington said the team needed to work on was its endurance. He said that they only practice four hours a week and it’s hard to stay in shape that way. Another reason is that the pools the team plays in for matches are Olympic-sized, a lot bigger than the pool in the HPER, where the team practices.
The team has three tournaments this season. This weekend they are traveling to Colorado.
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu