As sophomore Matilda “Tilly” Glaser prepares to pass the ball to her teammate during one of the girls water polo practices, she can hear the laughter and the rustling water at the Oviedo Aquatic Center. The team is relatively new, but they’re not new to each other.
“[My favorite moment on the team] so far has been watching the girls finally click, seeing the wheels start turning and them playing as a team was awesome,” head coach M.K. Allen said.
Almost all of the players of the girls team last year left, or were seniors. It left the coaches and the program to rebuild. Luckily, Oviedo has a league of swimmers, swimming for both the school and the “Blue Dolphins” club, who were intrigued by their coaches and fellow swimmers’ proposals to join the team. Water polo and swimming are different; the atmosphere, however, is familiar.
“You have to tread a lot of water [in water polo], it’s a lot of pressure on your legs, so you have to have strong legs—which a lot of us swimmers have,” Glaser said.
In any sport, it’s only natural that a team builds a special bond together. Whether that be from proximity, teamwork or genuine cohesiveness—the team is happy to work together on all of it. Glaser’s water polo teammate and fellow swimmer, junior goalie Callista “Cali” Treeman-Reinke basks on the differences of the submerged sports.
“Swim is a very individually based sport. Water polo combines swim, and a lot of other team sports, like soccer for example, [where you’re working together] instead of by yourself,” Treeman-Reinke said.
The girls practice three times per week excluding Friday, and have at least one game per week. During tournaments, this schedule is extended to Fridays and the weekend.
“We spend a lot of time around each other, so we understand each other pretty well,” Glaser said.
Bonding outside of the pool is important too, and the coaches and the girls themselves try to get together to spend time with each other without the pressure of a difficult practice or stressful game.
“We’re like a family—we’re always laughing together, because we’re such a small team, and we’ve known each other for so long, [we have] inside jokes and we always get along so well,” sophomore Julia Cannaday said.
One example of the team’s fun get-togethers is just recently when the boys and girls team headed to a male teammate’s house for a whopping nine pounds of pancakes for the two teams to enjoy.
“I ate five pancakes myself, the girls just sat there and talked to each other and the guys ran around the yard—it was just so fun because both teams were having fun individually and together,” Treeman-Reinke said.
Coaches Allen and Neil Dash both work to support their teams athletically, but also as influential adults in impressionable pressured student-athletes lives. Allen and Dash have experience as Oviedo alumni and college level student-athletes, so they know how to balance the main role of sports coach, with supportive confidantes, and a shoulder to cry on.
“I know how much the mentors in my life meant to me in high school, and I can only pray to be that way for these athletes,” Allen said.
This effort is not unnoticed by her players.
“She [Allen] has always been there by my side, even during the summer when I was having friendship issues, or family issues—I’d say ‘I don’t know what to do’ and she’d say ‘Let me see what I can do,’” Treeman-Reinke said.
But winning doesn’t just happen. The girls train hard at their practices, even with the fun.
“We do drills, they [coaches] work with us on conditioning, some running, practicing treading [water] stuff like that,” Cannaday said.
On Saturday, Mar. 28, the Lions attained victory over their sworn rivals, the Hagerty Huskies, winning 4-3.
“I tell my teams that I don’t care about their record—I care about their effort, and that, [their effort] is all that they really can control, that’s all you can really ask from your players,” Allen said.
