Despite its 1-9 record at the midseason mark, the co-ed Water Polo Club is confident its luck will change during the second half of the season.
The team went 0-4 last weekend at Virginia in a tournament against their conference foes.
The club currently stands in ninth place out of 10 teams in the Atlantic division of the Collegiate Water Polo Association. Its only win came at the beginning of the season against Tobacco Road rival North Carolina.
According to team president Nicholas Morse, a junior in business management, the team is stronger than last year’s squad, which finished ninth overall.
“Our goals are to show up more in games and have fewer blowouts, which we’ve been doing already,” he said. “This year we are hoping to finish sixth or seventh. We have a solid chance to do this.”
The team’s numbers have more than doubled since last year, which Morse said can be attributed to the team’s aggressive recruiting in the off-season. The team currently boasts more than 40 members, which third-year member Davis Murphy said is the most it has had since he joined.
“We’ve consistently had a large turnout in practice compared to the first two years I was here,” Murphy, a junior in mechanical engineering, said. “We have a lot of new freshmen, which is also exciting. They’re picking up things pretty quick, but it’s a hard game to learn. It has a pretty steep learning curve.”
Water polo is a relatively new sport. Its popularity is mostly limited to the West Coast, according to first-year member Marie Newkirk. Newkirk, originally from California, is a competitive swimmer who joined the Water Polo Club for the cross training benefits of the sport.
“It’s really physically challenging,” Newkirk, a sophomore in international studies, said. “It’s nonstop. You’re treading the whole time. People don’t realize [that] you’re in eight-foot water. You’re not allowed to touch the bottom except during periods. You go from treading to sprinting down the pool for the whole period.”
Joseph Briggs, a sophomore in math, is another competitive swimmer who picked up the sport once he entered N.C. State.
“I didn’t want to swim laps anymore,” Briggs said. “I was really burnt out to where I didn’t want to swim competitively or do club swimming. Water polo was a good compromise, a team sport that was physical when I wasstill in the water.”
In addition to Newkirk, the team’s roster includes nine females. The CWPA features several teams that play with only males, but according to Morse, that is not requirement.
Alondra Izquierdo, a second-year player and a senior in mechanical engineering, said she doesn’t mind being one of the only females in the conference.
“It’s awesome because you get to show what you have and bring it,” Izquierdo said. “It’s interesting to see guys’ reactions when you’re playing, and they’re all guys, and you’re a chick, and you’re beating them down the pool.”
Genevieve Pike, a sophomore in chemical engineering, said there were benefits to being matched-up with males in a full contact sport.
“They’re like, ‘You can get away with this because you’re a girl,’ so that’s kind of cool,” Pike said.
Even though Pike gets to enjoy some advantages, she never feels as though she is lesser than the opposite sex.
“I don’t feel discriminated against or anything. I just feel like somebody else on the team,” said Pike.
With many new members, Newkirk said this season will ultimately serve as a rebuilding year. She said several key members were unable to make the trip to Virginia, accounting for its disappointing showing in the latest tournament.
Morse said the team plans to hold its own tournament next semester, with hopes of drawing teams from across the country.
But until then, the team remains focused on winning the remainder of its contests.
Earlier this season, N.C. State fell to powerhouses Duke and Virginia Tech. Briggs said the losses made the team realize how hard it would have to work this season to reach the level of the conference’s top teams.
“They both beat us pretty handily,” Briggs said. “It is kind of to be expected, because they were the two finalists last year for the conference.”
