Where’s the support for water polo?

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Thomas Brellis

Ethan Ramos ’22 is the captain of the boys’ water polo team.

As the winter season comes knocking on our doors, we see the end of the fall sports season, and with that comes memories of the games we heard about, read about, or saw. But a lot of the student body is not aware of one of LQHS’ most competitive sports, water polo.

Just like many other sports, such as girls’ volleyball and tennis, water polo faces the problem of low audience and advertising.

Ashton Reyes ’22 recounts, “Watching the student body walk away, while we were playing right in front of them, was very disheartening.”

Many of the water polo players have the same feeling about their lack of recognition from other students. 

Juan Ruiz, who is the school’s athletic director, details administration’s role in the publicity of the less popular sports as media-based.

“From my opinion, it’s the media,” he said. “We tell the media we have other sports, but they will do what they want.”

He goes on to detail the trend in popularity in other sports as well.

“In the last few years, I have seen more of an honest effort from the media to cover these sports,” Ruiz said. “I think it’s going to slowly move that way.” 

The real lack of support in this situation comes from the student body.

When surveying an electoral class of 39 students on who had actually been to a water polo game, none said they had.

Levi Reyes ’24 believes the problem stems from both parties.

“Students don’t talk to each other on whether or not they would go to the water polo games, like they would with football or basketball,” Reyes said. 

Kelly Becker, one of the biggest water polo advocates and coaches on campus, believes the problems with the attendance issue are due to a multitude of reasons, one of the biggest being weather. She noted that watching games in September and October heat can be terrible.  

When asked about the lack of water polo knowledge or excitement by both students and administration, she said, “We have all of the information on our website, people just need to view it.”