It’ll be California against the world in water polo at the Paris Olympics this summer.
The U.S. men’s and women’s Olympic water polo teams will soon travel to France with 13-player rosters that are almost entirely made up of Californians. And about half of them have Bay Area ties.
“The Bay Area allowed me to dream big,” said three-time Olympic gold medalist and Monte Vista High graduate Maggie Stevens, whose bid for a fourth gold medal will start this month in Paris.
Swimming is part of the Bay Area’s DNA.
“It’s the weather and the facilities,” said U.S. women’s water polo coach and Mountain View native Adam Krikorian.
Coaches point to Contra Costa County, where there are more than 60 recreational swimming pools, including an Olympic-size pool at Contra Costa College.
“What happens is all the kids know how to swim, a lot of them get tired of swimming and they want to play a game, so they go right into water polo,” said John Roemer, the Miramonte High School coach who was recently named the best girls’ water polo coach in the country by MaxPreps.
When Roemer’s daughter, Jewel, was 7 and swimming for the Sun Valley Swim Team, some of the parents would organize a casual game of water polo when the girls got bored.
“Out of that game, there are now five Division-I swimmers,” he said.
Jewel, who now plays at Stanford and will also represent the United States in Paris this summer, didn’t like water polo at first.
“It’s because I wasn’t good at it,” she said. “You’re getting splashed and drowned by older players. It was hard in the beginning. Two years later I started getting the hang of things. I’d say when I was 9 I started to actually really like it.”
In the East Bay, a trio of competitive teams have sent dozens of players to D-I universities and the Olympics: Lamorinda Water Polo Club, Team Diablo and Roemer’s 680 Drivers Club.
“If I take the best three players off those three rosters and play against the teams from Southern California, we’d win every year,” John Roemer said. “But we have such a little area with three really good clubs, and then every club down south has an area of the size of Contra Costa County.”
Across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Anselmo, Sleepy Hollow Aquatics has produced several top-tier talents, including Stanford’s Dylan Woodhead, who will compete for the American men in Paris.
Jessica Steffens, left with her sister Maggie Steffens of the United States pose for the cameras after winning their women’s water polo gold medal match against Spain at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
“I really fell in love with the community,” Woodhead said. “It’s a really special place with a lot of role models, guys who wanted to play and do well in school. There’s so many factors that go into what sport you play but the community you find in those sports might be the most important.”
Some of the most established Bay Area water …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
