How to improve waterpolo spreading and quality in countries like UK and US - Part 3

"...but what for a girl that has done with the studies but would still like to play waterpolo at decent-high level, or if she is still at college but needs to move from sunny Cali....
Well, most of these girls have just one option: to search for a master, boys/girls mixed team where, if they are lucky, they can have the possibility to play a couple of tournaments a year against a 90% boys teams..."




In US the situation as I said is very different and I think also more complicated to solve:

as we can see from both the national teams we can't say that the waterpolo level is low, but after being here I can definitely say that, for a girl that is not a player of the national team but that would still like to play some good waterpolo, is hard to find a proper league and a only-girl team!

The only exception is made by the state of California and his colleges...but what for a girl that has done with the studies but would still like to play waterpolo at decent-high level, or if she is still at college but needs to move from sunny Cali....

Well, most of these girls have just one option: to search for a master, boys/girls mixed team where, if they are lucky, they can have the possibility to play a couple of tournaments a year against a 90% boys teams.

The problem is that, as you can understand, for a girl playing waterpolo against guys can be very taught and also, being waterpolo a very physical sport, very different from the waterpolo they used to play in a girls only team.

That's why most of the girls just stop after college and in these master teams, even if it is allowed to have girls playing, you can hardly find some. I think this situation is due to the fact that in this country high level sport is seen especially during college years, and that after college people instead prefer to focus more on working and if they really still wanna play have the possibility to do that on an easy-going master team....where instead in Italy we can still see in second and third divisions late 20ies and 30ies players who still give so much to middle level teams in terms of experience.

The Georgia Tech Waterpolo Team

I see so many high school and college waterpolo women teams where girls have great potentials that I think it would be worth to try to build up women teams for players that leave the college, but they not necessarily want to stop playing this sport.

Unfortunately the huge distances in this country make very difficult for teams to travel but I think that they could maybe start in areas where waterpolo is a well played sport at college (probably start at states level) and see what does it happen.

And then maybe starting to have a proper league as they do during college.


 Read the 1st article by Viviana Castagna 
 Read the 2nd article by Viviana Castagna