This weekend, the Ball State coed water polo team will travel to Akron for their second tournament of the fall season.
From the last tournament, where the team went 2-1, head coach Kohler Mohr said the team needed to work on endurance training.
“I think from the last tournament, we all realized that we weren’t the fastest team in the pool,” Mohr said. “This is something that we’re going to definitely work on and make us a better team as a whole.”
In the game of water polo, a player needs the endurance to move around their defender and try to throw the ball into the net. Water polo uses the entire pool and usually the bottom is six feet deep, Mohr said.
At the Case Western tournament last weekend, the team scored 21 goals in one of their games. Shot selection has been one of the positives for the water polo team, but Mohr said he wants the team to work on certain situations.
“We really need to try and run a play and set up in the right formation,” Mohr said. “There are definitely a lot of positives that we need to take away from that tournament.”
PLAYERS TO WATCH
The coed team will be in Akron this weekend. They will be facing teams like a mix team from Ann Arbor and Pittsburgh, Case Western, Akron and Cleveland. Harrison Raft, a sophomore journalism major, said he wants his team to work on pressure passing.
“Having a defender put the guy with the ball in a position, where he would need to work around him,” Raft said. “The faster you swim the more endurance you have. More likely you will be able to tread up higher with your legs and use your strength to get around your defender.”
For Kara Hernandez, a sophomore telecommunications major, said she hates swimming laps.
“But it’s really beneficial because people get tired in the pool really quickly, so this helps with endurance,” Hernandez said. “After halfway through, we go to the diving well and actually do drills, which I think is the most fun.”
This is Hernandez’s first time playing water polo. Hernandez said from the first tournament she learned that the sport revolves around teamwork.
“Everyone has to work together to make sure passes are in the right spot, you’re helping each other out and keeping space to do stuff,” Hernandez said. “Me being new working with people that have played all their lives has been very helpful and very nice to learn new things.”
The team will travel to Akron and will face a mix team of Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor at 11:45 a.m.
Patrick Murphy 