If CC doesn’t count against your NCAA eligibility, I can definitely see this becoming a more viable option for many. Two extra years to develop as a player and figure out what you want to actually study is invaluable (most HS seniors don’t have a clue what they want to major in). Not to mention the extra two years of eligibility you can apply to graduate school…we know of a player who is using two years of eligibility after graduating early to pay/play in medical school.
This also doesn’t take into account the player that actually did get recruited into a 4yr program and is forced to enter the portal because of grades, but can now go to CC to get their academics in order and continue to develop while not losing a year of eligibility.
That latter route seems more likely. And with the Covid rules lots of grad school students are still playing. I can also see potential for collaboration between state CC’s and state 4-year schools in the same state. A lot of these scenarios seem to be the athletic tail wagging the CC or college/university dog, though. The CC route has always been a way for kids who can’t meet college entrance requirements for scholarships to beef up their academics so they can qualify. (Ditto for PG years at prep schools.) But if you take a kid who got accepted to a Stanford/Princeton/Harvard/Navy/Brown/etc. AND got recruited to play D1 water polo, he or she has been both an academic and an athletic superstar for years. I don’t see a lot of those kids being happy to spend 2 years at a CC. I do think a lot of them would be interested in getting med/law/business/graduate school paid for after finishing 4 years on a D1 varsity program.
As someone who has coached at the CC level, I can say with quite a bit of confidence that even if the two years at a junior college don’t count against your eligibility it is not going to lead to many players playing at CC that would not have otherwise.
I think you can still expect to see foreign players use CC as a viable option to get to a four year through the same programs that have traditionally been able to get those players to attend (goldenwest, west valley, Long Beach).
Unfortunately, the reputation of CCs and the perceptions around them for athletes (or their parents) will be hard to overcome. The reality is that most water polo athletes (especially high level athletes) don’t need CC wither athletically or academically.
Recruiting for junior college water polo is not easy. I would say it’s harder than recruiting for a four year. And in my experience very few parents are convinced that their child who can get into a four year should go the junior college route regardless of finances and athletics and everything else.
That being said, I do wish more people looked into CC water polo. In California a resident can get their two years for free and most CCs have automatic acceptance at certain UCs and Cal States. There may be a slight bump in the numbers at the CC because of this ruling, but I think it’s foolhardy to think any significant number of players will see CC as an option. Most will just choose not to play.
Also, one more thing about CC water polo specific to the women’s side that should be mentioned in this conversation: because the CC women’s season is in the fall, if a player transfers between fall and spring they are able to play the NCAA four year season in the same academic year. So reasonably a player could play her first ( or first two) seasons in the fall at a CC and not waste any eligibility and still be able to play that same academic year for a school they transferred to. This used to be a way to essentially double dip a year of eligibility at two schools in one year and you’d see it a lot with sciac transfers, but I wonder if that’s as lucrative if the CC season(s) don’t count against your eligibility.
Those are two good relays. It will be interesting to see if Trevor can dig up comparable times for the Fordham relay-in-our-minds. But what really matters is not how fast these are guys are off the blocks and with a flip turn, but how fast they are from a water start at <5M (for drives); 5-20 M (for counters); or 10-25 M (for recovering from behind against the counter). It’s a related but quite different skill set.
Just checked stats. For Fordham, Toth won 83 sprints in 33 games. Other players won 13. Ignoring OT’s and sprints that other players might have lost, that’d make Toth at least 83/119. I can’t find UCLA stats for the season, and if I could we’d face the problem that UCLA’s average competition was stronger so we’d not have an apples to apples comparison. Unfortunately, the two teams never played head to head, so we don’t know who’d have won the swim-off title.
I completely agree with Mepolo. While it’s interesting to look at the data on what a player swims in a fast suit, tapered and shaved from 1-2 years ago, there isn’t much relevance to polo. I would be more interested in recent 500 or 1650-yard splits.
Those are two good relays. It will be interesting to see if Trevor can dig up comparable times for the Fordham relay-in-our-minds. But what really matters is not how fast these are guys are off the blocks and with a flip turn, but how fast they are from a water start at <5M (for drives); 5-20 M (for counters); or 10-25 M (for recovering from behind against the counter). It’s a related but quite different skill set.
Agreed 100% - I would add in response time and anticipation to the calculation.
Just checked stats. For Fordham, Toth won 83 sprints in 33 games. Other players won 13. Ignoring OT’s and sprints that other players might have lost, that’d make Toth at least 83/119.
Toth and Provenziani are there long term. They knew what they were coming into: one year where they go all in with the 9 seniors and the year after it would be their team which it for sure is. Not to mention Fordham probably comped the entirety of their tuition
Alika Naone, formerly at Cal and LBSU, has reportedly entered the transfer portal as a graduate student. A lot of history here. I’m curious to see which schools offer him a spot.