Maybe you know about the sport water polo or maybe you even play it.  When asked about the sport maybe you think “What’s that?” Or “How do they play polo underwater?” Most high schools today do not have a team, and if they do they are not very advertised, funded, or known about. 

In this complex sport, you must swim/tread water to float, and not touch the bottom of the pool. The 7 people on each team must pass the ball with one hand, and get it down the pool to get it in the goal of the opposing team.

The sport is full contact. When watching a water polo game you see players leave the game with a bloody nose, headbutts to the face, or even watch a 37-55 mph shot to a goalie’s face. For a women’s water polo game suits are often grabbed. 

“The suits are painful to wear with how tight they are, when I finish a game I have marks from the suit and  claw marks from other people’s nails.” Says Sienna Hoff, a junior on the Tualatin High Water polo team. “For game suits, it sometimes takes two people to zip up my suit.”

Grant is a sophomore at Wilsonville High School,  never played water polo. Grant describes water polo as “underwater soccer but everyone tries to drown themselves.” He knows  one person playing the sport and when asked if he could play the sport he said with a giggle “No, I would die, I do not have enough stamina.”

Water polo is a winter sport and currently, at Wilsonville High School, only one girl is playing the sport. This athlete must play for Tualatin High School through the inclusivity rule, which states that if your school does not have a team you can play for the closest school to you with a team.

Fisher Tweten is a sophomore at Oregon City. Fisher is captain of the Tualatin boys water polo team. “It’s physically and mentally demanding, it takes every single muscle group while combining cardio and pure physical strength. You take the hardest parts of sports and do it while hardly breathing and treading water,” says Fisher. 

Fisher thinks being at a school where there is no water polo team leads to a lot of questions being asked by peers about the sport. He must also travel a lot to find competition at his higher level, but he enjoys how it gives him opportunities to travel to the US. 

“It’s kinda annoying to see how funded other sports in the school are while water polo is hardly known about,” says Sienna. She thinks it is nice to have a community in your school even though it is very small, she also says that the sport connects her to other people at different schools. 

When you go to a high school football or basketball game you often see the stands filled on both ends, with the student section cheering loudly, and dressed to support the team. If you find yourself burned out or bored of a sport now you know yet another sport you can look into.