The boys water polo team at Oviedo has been one of its most successful, with last season’s success including a 12th place ranking in the state propelling them to enter this season with sky high expectations.

“Our team goal is to make it to states,” junior Pierce Fuller said.

This lofty goal has been supported by their 8-2 start this season, with their only losses coming against the 6th-ranked Belen Jesuit and 7th-ranked Columbus in a pair of tight losses. But these losses by no means put a damper on what the team has achieved so far.

The team has built on a solid foundation of experienced upperclassmen, surrounded by a youth movement with 11 out of 18 team members being underclassmen. This dynamic has allowed the younger players on the team to develop experience and veteran leadership.

“Everybody’s working hard in practice. We’re learning from the guys that are older than us and we’re trying our best,” sophomore Charlie Warren said. 

This leadership and growth have allowed for major contributions from the team’s younger players, such as sophomore Max Krywonos, whose seven goals are third on the team. Even with this success, Krywonos has set his goals even higher.

“My personal goal would be to score 30 goals,” Krywonos said.

That kind of success in water polo is achieved uniquely, as the game requires a mixture of skills rarely needed together: swimming and ball skills. This unique combo makes training for the sport extremely unique for the athletes.

“What’s different [in water polo] from swimming is that we do drills,” Fuller said.

As well as involving a ball and team element, another difference the athletes face is the different form of swimming needed to succeed in water polo.

“Swim [practice] is a lot of repeats of sets and below waters, we work on a bunch of different things like turning,” Krywonos said.

These unique aspects of the sport have not stopped the young team from finding major success this year by building up a good all-around game. 

“I think we have some really good offensive players that are just continuously scoring goal after goal and our defense has also been really good this year, they’ve made my job [as goalie] a lot easier,” Warren said.

The accomplishments of the team mixed with their youth bode extremely well for them down the stretch and into the future. 

“We’re hopefully going to keep carrying that [success] forward for the next couple of years,” said Warren.