This month, I am continuing my December 1 article about waterpolo in the 21st century that looks at what is wrong with the sport and offers a solution that is within each of our [individual] powers to implement despite the obstacles in our path.
To refresh your memory, my December 1 article ended in the following;“We need to collectively wake up, pull together, roll up our sleeves and get to work… before we find [water polo] back at a state fair… in a Madame Toussads diorama of extinct species.”
The facts and signs are clear to most of us all over the world---waterpolo is dead as a sport and there is a good possibility that 2016 will be the final Olympiad for water polo unless drastic measures are taken to rejuvenate the game and bring it into the 21st century.
The reasons for this decline are myriad and appear nearly unfixable. The symptoms of this decline include, but are not limited to, the following:Diminishing participation across the former stronghold nations in (Eastern) Europe
40% reduction in attendance at professional games all over Europe in only 1 year
Stagnant growth in the US, all growth of which is limited to one state
Incomprehensible rules not suited to TV, spectators, or men under 6’6”
Facility limitations in nearly all areas
Governance by small minded, self serving politician-administrators, more concerned with preserving their own power and salary base than the preservation and growth of the game (severe issue in Europe)
In the US, we have become fixated with growing the sport at the NCAA level as a means of growing the sports participation and popularity.
Growing the sport via the NCAA is a strategy USAWP adopted almost twenty years ago. The logic was simple: universities have pool facilities. The decision to go after NCAA teams was based on the presumption that there was no other simple and inexpensive way to grow the number of available aquatic facilities that could host a water polo team. Unfortunately, any effort to grow the sport by convincing an athletic director to add water polo is an effort of gargantuan proportions, and this effort must still overcome all of the limitations I note above.
Up to this point, much of the WP community has relied on USA Water Polo for the impetus to grow the sport. The sport is suffering while we wait for someone else to fix the problem. While they focus on the NCAA path, I would argue that the onus is on us to create a solution to utilize the vast resources of the entire water polo community if we would like to stop the contraction of the sport.
For the New Year, I am calling on everyone to join me in a grass roots effort to resuscitate the sport. Our community has the skills, experience and ideas to bring new life into a sport currently on life support. Perhaps it is time to simply look at a different way to grow the sport.
My belief is that we need to address the problem at the grass roots level where each one of us,no matter where we live, can become a local, positive force of growth with few of the obstacles that face us elsewhere. We need to build a program where we introduce waterpolo to the largest possible percentage of the children (and parents) in the USA and promote popularity to both players and knowledgeable spectators from the ground up without complicated rules, high membership fees, and the propensity to make a simple game complex and incomprehensible.
The answer is for each of us to work toward incorporating a water polo type ball game and/or ball skills into every communities Learn to Swim Program. Let’s take a brief look at why this makes sense:
Every city and towns parks or recreation department and summer camp has a Learn to Swim program already in existence, whether it be in a lake, ocean, pond, outdoor, or indoor pool. Incorporating the game into Learn to Swim programs and summer camps would expose the largest number of children possible to the sport in every state across the country.
Most swim instructors find it difficult to engage a childs attention for an entire hour of swim lessons endlessly teaching the same thing and would welcome any form of water game that will help make swimming lessons more enjoyable and encourage kids to learn.
Entry level aquatic games are not facility limited. A no contact version of water polo for 5-12 year olds can easily be played in any size pool or pond and across the width of even a 25 yard pool. Goals can be a couple of lawn chairs.
All of us know that the eggbeater kick is far more effective as an aquatic survival skill than treading water…so let’s teach the eggbeater instead.
This is a chance to experiment with simple, easy to understand no contact rules that require no referee-simply an occasional finger wag from the swim instructor and supports pick-up games in any water. Simple rules that engage parents as well as kids without an intensive learning curve.
A Learn to Swim foundation would give each city or town a sufficient number of teams which could play against each other within the framework of swim lessons. No need for any travel.
Introducing waterpolo in Learn to Swim programs would expose swim instructors to the basics of the game and make these future swim coaches and aquatic directors more friendly toward the sport.
As more kids (and parents) participate in all areas, a groundswell of support is simultaneously created to add all deep facilities for older kids that are then incorporated into high school programs. As the sport becomes more popular in high schools, it becomes similarly attractive to colleges and universities.
USA Water Polo began the entry level game “Splashball” in 2010 which they promote with a low barrier to entry membership fee of $30 per player supported by a professional suite of support materials. In the year plus of development and year plus of implementation there are a growing number of programs incorporated into existing water polo clubs yet still no growth outside California. Splashball is considered to be an entry level program for established water polo clubs, 90% of which exist in California.
The development of all major sports suggests that we need to make a concentrated effort to expose the maximum number of children in every state to an aquatic ball game within a no barrier framework and expect that some percentage of these kids continues on to play more water polo at a higher level down the road. This is exactly what happened to the popularity of competitive swimming after the Red Cross became a nationwide force for swimming instruction and aquatic safety. The Red Cross rapidly became the standard of instruction by offering their services, certifications and materials at no charge. Thousands of kids began to learn to swim and a percentage of those went on to competitive swimming.
My vision is to go completely outside existing water polo programs with a game that is not a standalone sport, but instead is a supplement, something that is easily and inexpensively incorporated into Learn to Swim Programs across the world. We will only bring large numbers of new players into a game that does not require a $300 set of caps, $1500 worth of goals, or a $30 membership fee.
If, for instance, I can get a program installed in the Indy Parks Learn to Swim program which serves 100,000 kids ages 5-12 and only 1% of the kids like it enough to continue playing, that is 1,000 kids and parents that I have added to the water polo community. There are only 1,700 members of USA Water Polo in the Midwest to 1,000 new members is significant.
WPP will provide support for anyone with the energy and enthusiasm to bring the game into their area. If there is demand, we will gladly add a public forum to the message board and support materials as downloads where we share ideas to make the program work, share experiences and give encouragement to everyone in the community to get going in their own part of the world. Enough of us have taught swimming to figure out how best to integrate ball skills and simple game into the existing learn to swim curriculum. Every one of knows that the eggbeater kick is far more effective as an aquatic survival skill than treading water. The bottom line is that we need to get balls in the water.
In short, we need to create a simple infrastructure where everyone who wants to participate in grassroots growth has input and the ability to make a difference… and there is always someone available to help if you have questions.
We need to format a program that uses our communities strength as missionaries from varsity teams and alumni, collegiate club programs, current and former high school and club players, parents, and masters, each of whom reaches out to their own cities and towns to spread the sport in a way that requires little more investment than our enthusiasm for and love of the game.
Hopefully with this effort, the sport wins, lives to continue a healthier life, far better able to survive.
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