Thanks! This is interesting
That table shows who is assigned to each tournament (or single game). Head referee for each event then assigns a pair of officials to each game. Officials disclose their alma mater, any close relatives who are players or coaches, etc. when they sign up to officiate.
I did very minimal digging and could not find any references to officating on the WCC or Big West water polo sites.
MPSF had an Officating Guideline reference that looks to have similar resources for refs that the CWPA provides.
MPSF uses RefQuest as their platform for pay, assigments, evaluators, and there seems to be a section for training here. can’t guarantee that is used.
this looks like very low hanging fruit to come together and create a unified program across the different conferences
No, the problem is Americans do not understand water polo rules. Americans want unbending black and white rules. That isn’t water polo. Water polo is a game dominated by Europeans and as a result we get European ways of thinking.
The wording of the major rules have not changed since I was in high school. When and how to apply the rules has changed many many times.
I haven’t seen many penalty shots interfered with, dare I say any, because when I administer a penalty shot I make sure the defenders cannot be close enough to do so. It also HAS to be in live time because if the shot is blocked or bars out, it is a live ball.
As to pay, there is simply no way that you can get paid enough to make it a standalone career. A USA WP tournament game you make $50-70 per game depending on the level and time of the quarters. In CIF SS you get $70 for a varsity game and an additional $37 ($35?) for a lower level game. $51 for a weekend tournament game. If you worked all you could you might make $500-700 a week during the HS season, but it is a very short season,
So there is no way you are going to get to $50k, let alone $75K. I lose money officiating, especially when I travel to do games in other states. It is a hobby. If it was a job I might hate it and start a union.
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No, the problem is Americans do not understand water polo rules. Americans want unbending black and white rules. That isn’t water polo.
So what are we gonna do? We can continue on the path we’ve been on for 30+ years where we bang our heads against the wall at Ref incompetence and follow Europe and try to bring everyone over to how the purists think the game should be.
… or we could acknowledge that we’re asking too much from the rubes and write/adopt rules that are geared towards American sport growth.
We’ve tried the former path, and we’ve consistently lost programs, we’re currently sitting at 31 D-1 Men’s programs. When do we abandon this path and try something else?
Our best chance at sport growth is Texas - can casual Texans understand the game and the fouls as is? Or are we asking too much?
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We are not asking too much. I think Texans are as smart as Europeans–as are most Americans with a more than casual interest in water polo–and are perfectly capable of understanding the rules of the game if they bother to read them and talk to experienced coaches, referees and players to learn how they are applied. (For heaven’s sake, those Texans mostly love football–a game with a truly inscrutable set of rules.) And based on what I’ve seen, no amount of rule changing “geared to American sport” will prevent water polo or football fans who don’t understand the rules from banging their heads against the wall.
The official rules have only a tangential relationship to the game. To top that off, they are not well laid out and poorly written, including using terminology different from what is customary (exclusion vs kick out, penalty throw vs 5m, corner throw vs 2m).
Currently the only way to learn the game is to sit next to someone who knows it well and ask questions for an hour.
Maybe USAWP could do a video intro to the calls of the game. This should be in the introductory course for prospective officials.
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ok, it sounds like I think there is a problem where the rules are hampering collegiate sport growth and you don’t think there is a problem, or maybe the 2 are unrelated. Maybe when we have 28 teams instead of 31 your viewpoint will change.
Title IX is an obstacle, but the dust has settled from the Title IX cuts of the 90’s - the new reality is we are in a competition with Lax, Field Hockey, Wrestling, Soccer, Rugby, Swim & Dive, etc. to be picked up. Soon the women will also compete with Flag football.
Athletic departments have finite resources, if a school is targeting sport expansion and Lax gets picked, they’re not also going to add water polo. It’s a zero-sum game. I think we need to make our sport appealing (via rules) to non-water polo people because they are the ones that control the purse-strings.
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What are we trying to fix? Grow the sport by making it easier to understand?
The rules are not the problem. The application of the rules is not a problem. I complain about reffing all of the time. We could use better refs.
Hockey fans aren’t complaining that you have to be a hockey savant to know the difference between a legal check, boarding and charging.
Football is a complete mystery to people who don’t grow up with it. I don’t know the rules of cricket and it’s one of the most popular sports in the world.
Basketball fans will complain forever when a foul is called or not called. No one thinks the rules need to be changed.
Don’t get me started on the strike zone.
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The best way to grow the sport is to give more kids access to pools. That’s first and foremost.
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Which rules? FINA rules as used in USAWP? NCAA rules? High School rules? They are all a little different–and more different in lay out and format and terminology than in substance. (The excessive length and detail of the NCAA rules as compared to FINA was a constant rant from the Righteous Referee on WPP.) While I think he–and you–are correct that the NCAA rules could be written more simply and clearly, I don’t think that has anything to do with the growth or decline in the number of teams who play NCAA water polo. As for video intro to the rules, check out the training materials on CWPA website. There is a lot there if you care to look. Referee Education - Collegiate Water Polo Association
Yes - if the sport falters in college (drops under xx # of teams) we’re done - we’ll be as popular as Cricket in America.
Easier to understand is only part of the equation.
In no particular order.
- Easier to understand
- Easier to access pools and pool time
- Lower cost to participate at youth level
- More D1 colleges with programs
- More pressure on those D1 programs to invest in athletes from the US
- Restrictions on numbers of international athletes per team
- More qualified referees
Feel free to add.
I have seen and heard all of the above as reasons why someone has either quit polo or decided not to start the sport.
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FINA/USAWP rules bear almost no relation to the actual game
Read 22.8-22.11 in the exclusion fouls section. None of the examples given are commonly called exclusion fouls. Also a literal interpretation would reclassify the majority of contra fouls as exclusions, and would result in exclusion calls in the vast majority of center/guard interactions.
Eg
WP 22.8 To impede or otherwise prevent the
free movement of an opponent who is not
holding the ball, including swimming on the
opponent’s shoulders, back or legs. “Holding”
is lifting, carrying or touching the ball but does
not include dribbling the ball.
Taken literally, if a center with back to the cage is trying to back up a guard and the guard pushes back, that’s as exclusion on the guard.
WP 22.10 To use two hands to hold an opponent not holding the ball anywhere in the field of play.
Guard and center locked up? Double exclusion.
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I’d LOVE to see the locked-up center and defender called consistently as a double exclusion. It would do more to open up the game to movement than any of the many rule changes intended to do that. That said, the center has always been called differently than the other positions in that respect. Your other example, the center defender pushing back against a center, is a call that will be made if the defender doesn’t show his hands, as the official should assume he’s holding if his hands are under water. With hands up, the defender is entitled to the water “between his shoulders”, and can hold that position with legs.
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I agree that’s how it’s called. But it’s impossible to know that from reading the rules!
In football, basketball, and baseball, the calls are actually pretty straightforward to explain and consistent with the rule book. The difference between eg blocking and charging is subtle but understandably so. Polo has a rule book that mostly gets ignored and called according to convention.
Even if you argue that mainstream American sports have this same feature, it’s not problematic because most kids grow up watching those sports. For polo to be picked up by adults who didn’t grow up with, it needs an easily accessible tutorial.
Given the House Settlement and all the NIL money that will be flowing to football & basketball it’s hard to see anyone adding D1 water polo at least on the men’s side. The growth of the sport at least for college is best done at the DIII level as John Abdou has been advocating for years.
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Go buy a whistle, sign up to ref so we can replace those incompetent refs with super qualified guys like you.
[quote=“Rational, post:45, topic:627”]and follow Europe and try to bring everyone over to how the purists think the game should be.
… or we could acknowledge that we’re asking too much from the rubes and write/adopt rules that are geared towards American sport growth.[/quote]
For sure, let’s water the sport down, make it unrecognizable because that is surely the way to grow it. What rule changes do you think would suddenly cause great growth>
Men’s water polo and all men’s minor sports has NOTHING TO DO with the application of the rules. It has everything to do with Title IX and the need for universities to create parity in their athletic programs. Rather than add more Women’s programs to create parity, they dropped men’s programs. In 1975 there were 156 DI wrestling programs, today there are 79. UCLA dropped their wrestling program with three future Olympians in the team. UCLA also dropped their men’s swimming team, UC freakin’ LA dropped men’s freakin’ swimming when it was a top program.
Take off the parent blinders, get involved at a real level.
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Maybe I am a Ref, maybe not.
Title IX was 1972, Reagan admin didn’t enforce Title IX fully and this dragged out sport cuts until the mid-90’s. I’ll admit any polo cuts from 1972-1999 were Title IX caused.
Anything post 2000 can’t be blamed on Title IX - instead I would blame football. But then we have to look at places like:
UC Santa Cruz
UC Riverside
Cal Poly SLO
Univ of San Diego
CSU Bakersfield
CSU East Bay & others
These are places in the heart of “water polo country” with accessible competition, local talent/interest, established conferences, etc and they all chose soccer, golf, tennis, or swimming instead of water polo.
The most recent program to add (UC Merced) had some nepotism as the AD played and his wife is a local polo coach.
Why do we face such struggles in growth when you remove the facility and travel demands (CA schools w/ existing pools)? - I don’t think a swim meet is more exciting than a water polo match. At what point do we look inward?
Because–even in California–WAY more kids play soccer, golf, tennis or swim than play water polo. Schools are not adding sports to grow them. They are adding them to make themselves more attractive to applicants. Adding a soccer or swim team attracts more applicant attention than water polo. And those Cali schools are probably really interested in attracting out-of-state kids and the big tuition $ they bring with them, and outside of California, the chance that a prospective applicant has played water polo in their high school years is pretty close to zero. More colleges will add water polo when more youth and high school programs create more kids who want to play polo in college.
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