Water Polo Anyone?

Our children are actively involved with team sports. Usually we can tell the season of the year by the sports they play. We have either "swim season (spring/summer)", "soccer season (fall)" or just "off season (winter)". This year, however, we're venturing into new "seasons". My second son, Jeffrey, decided to join high school water polo team with a little nudge from me. You see, he's played soccer since about 1st grade. However, he has terrible allergies. He's allergic to pretty much everything... but especially allergic to grass & weeds among many other things. And soccer is played on the grass, and during the "soccer season" he's required more medications. During the "swim season" he doesn't have any problems... so I asked him to give water polo a try. Being a non-confrontational person that he is, he said, "if you want me to try it, I'll sign up". Well, to his and our surprise he loves water polo. In fact, he's pretty good at it. It does wear him out... after all they have water polo practice after school for 2 hours every day. But he's having so much fun that he looks forward to going to water polo practice.

Over this weekend his water polo team played in a scrimmage-type tournament. This is the first time most of these boys have played any real game. Most of the Freshmen have never played water polo before. Over the two day period, they played total of seven games. All though it was a JV tournament, coach decided to send just the Freshmen. So there were just 12 boys... All the other school brought their whole JV team, so they had mixture of Freshmen & Sophomore. One of the teams they played against had 22 players! They played hard, and over the course of two days we saw dramatic improvement in their game skills. It was the first time I watched a water polo game, and by the end of the weekend I was at the edge of my seat. It was so exciting! By the way, I had no idea how "physical" water polo was. I found out it was a "contact sport". Oh well... I was able to take few pictures with my "point-and-shoot" camera.

All the players had a duffel bag with their name embroidered

Jeffrey with one of his teammates before the game
notice the team polo shirt? They looked sharp
It matches the duffel bag

Right after the warm up... coaches (in wide-brim hats)
going over the game plans with the team
Jeffrey is the only one sitting up on deck
Here's Jeffrey with his teammates
getting instruction from his coach
Goalie has the red stripe on their cap
Jeffrey is #4getting ready to pass the ball to his teammate

Jeffrey on a break-away
He was pretty fast

This is where the subs were sitting
with their coach

Notice the person on the left back in white?
That's Chris cheering his brother on
Notice the color of my son?
He's gotten quite dark

Jeffrey resting between games

It was an exciting and new experience for us all. Jeffrey had a great time playing water polo even though it was long and tiring two days. For me, I learn totally new game. It was fast, aggressive and exciting to watch.