Latvia

[Sfvalleypolo]

Surely I'm misunderstanding something, so I was hoping someone could shed some light.

Just saw scores from the recent European Mens Junior qualifiers (http://www.waterpoloworld.com/News/tabi ... erway.aspx) taking place this weekend. Two games that really stood out:

Malta vs. Latvia 51-0 (11-0, 13-0, 14-0, 13-0)
Latvia vs. Great Britain 0-53 (0-15, 0-13, 0-11, 0-12)

I thought, "There's no WAY this country's national junior team just got blown out 104-0 over two games. Gotta be a typo". Then I found a YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4C5HeD0Nzc

That's their senior team (in blue). They didn't do much better, getting outscored 127-1 over 3 games. The results from those games (played Feb 8 2015) can be found here:
http://www.waterpoloworld.com/News/tabi ... roups.aspx

Can someone explain WTF is going on over in Latvia, if this has been happening for a long time, why nothing has been done, etc. Is water polo new in Latvia? I'm all for development, and if it's a new thing there then it's great to see the community grow...but someone's gotta explain. I must not be understanding this correctly....

[dwpc69]

Latvia is a small Baltic country with no water polo tradition as far as I know. Soccer, hockey, basketball are very popular there but hardly anybody plays water polo...