<p>Not quite sure where to post this, but I'm hoping someone can provide some guidance. Son was turned down for USNA this year, so will go to Virginia Tech and reapply for USNA Class of 2015. He's identified athletics as being the weakest part of his USNA application and wants to work on that this year. HS sports: Played JV football and loved it, but at under 140 lbs Varsity just wasn't going to happen. Ran track/cross country & swam, but not a standout athlete. Then this year he grew - he's now 6'1", 175 lbs and seems to be still getting bigger. He'd like to play water polo for Navy, but never having played before he has no idea how realistic a goal this is. He's working out with a trainer, will attend the Navy water polo camp this summer and plans on playing club water polo at Virginia Tech this fall.</p>
<p>Obviously, he needs to talk to the coach at Navy, but he'd like to get an idea (before he talks to the coach) of how reasonable the idea of playing D-1 is given he didn't play in high school. Assuming you are big enough and strong enough, how hard is it to learn the techniques and rules of the game?</p>
<p>no clue how big a deal water polo is at USNA, but I suspect it’s a big deal as the USNA has serious D1 athletics.</p>
<p>It is very rare to play any D1 sport without extensive experience as a junior. I can say the water polo players I know at Pac10 schools and Ivies were performing at national championship talent levels as juniors to even make these college D1 teams.</p>
<p>good luck to your son, it would make for a great story if he has the grit to make a D1 team without junior experience.</p>
<p>it is not hard to learn the rules and techniques of the game…quite another thing to be extraordinarily good at them. to start you need to be a very, very good swimmer. next you need to be a very good polo player (think running related to soccer). You can be a really great runner and a really bad soccer player but, you can’t be a really great soccer player and not be a very good runner - same applies to h2o polo. if the camp this summer has other D1 caliber players, he should get a sense of his competitiveness.
a typical D1 recruit is at or near state champ level swimming and started varsity 3+ years on a very good team in a very good division…as one of the best players. there must be other routes, but they would be atypical. following is a profile from a player on USNA:
A 2008 graduate of Westview High School, Wertz lettered four times in water polo and three times in swimming … was the 2007 team captain, league MVP, team MVP and was a member of the All-CIF team … led swimming team to the 2006 county title … played against teammate Taylor Sultz in high school … Kyle M. Wertz … son of Mike and Catie Wertz … born June 5, 1990, in San Diego, Calif. … father, Mike, is a 1977 Naval Academy graduate and currently is employed as a pilot … had two sisters play water polo collegiately at UC Santa Barbara and Hartwick College … majoring in aerospace engineering.
i hope this helps. it is a longshot, but worth a try. good luck</p>
<p>It is pretty unrealistic to expect to make the Navy water polo team. There are many players who have played for years and years and don’t even make the team. Your son should concentrate on a sport that he has done before.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback. I think what I was really asking is if a year of training & playing at the club level could possibly compare to 3-4 years of high school training or if that’s just laughable. Son really isn’t expecting to make the team; he just thinks water polo sounds like a lot of fun and if there’s even a chance (however slim) he could make the Navy team then why not try? To Skipshots point: you’re probably right, but his other sports (swimming and cross country) are really individual sports and he wants to be part of a team that is directly, physically competing against another team.</p>
<p>Even quite a few of the club teams are competitive at Virginia Tech to join- there are tryouts, competing with guys that have regional, state honors in high school,etc. depending on the sport. Some of the guys (in some sports) would be competitive for D1 schools but chose not to go that route for different reasons (limited opportunity in some sports for guys after Title 1X, some guys don’t want the pressure of varsity sports in college and want a more low key experience in college that club sports might provide, want to concentrate on a demanding major,etc). Some of these club guys though can be pretty fierce competitors! Plenty of intramural opportunities as well as club at a place like Virginia Tech.</p>
<p>Don’t kid yourself, the student-athletes at USNA can flat out play. Not only that, the demands they place on their students, particularly the athletes, is borderline unfair. I worked with a water polo player who ended up at the USNA, but he ended up washing out before the first year was over. It’s that tough.</p>