Marco Polo

My best friend Liz and I decided to try out for water polo our freshman year of high school. Conditioning was brutal. We had daily doubles which involved dryland training. This meant we ran around a field in the morning in 90 degree weather, did a million jumping jacks, and lifted weights. We had to piggyback people up a hill of death and Liz puked orange juice. In the afternoon we had our regular conditioning in the pool. We wore shirts and shorts in the water over our swimsuits so it would be harder to swim. This was water polo's equivalent to a medicine ball.

Freshman year I didn't have contacts yet, so I just tried to blend in with everyone else who could see. I probably just looked a little slow.

Happily Liz knew this and would often yell tips (Incoming! Or, swim straight, cut three feet to your left, and look up!). I was lucky to have a visually adept and conscientious person to look out for me. Swimming is a sport you can do almost blind because you're isolated in your own lane and there are giant black lines painted on the floor and a row of flags above you to tell you when you're going to smash into the wall. In water polo however, you have to track a ball and anticipate things before they happen and know where and who your teammates are. Luckily the ball is bright yellow. It's also harder than you'd expect, but I only got hit in the face a few times. I'd say under 10 times. After a couple of skull rattling bounces I felt a little loopy but at least I knew where the ball was finally. It was right there ricocheting off my head! The coach didn't know I was blind, so he probably just thought I really sucked. To his credit, I did score on my own goal once in practice. The goalie caps are red, so there is no way to tell if they're on your team! That and my hearing seems to get worse when I can't see. If you can't see who's yelling at you and you're surrounded by people yelling things, it gets confusing quickly. So I just shot at the nearest goal usually, unless my own teammate was in the goal yelling at me. On a positive note, I didn't see any Speedos in detail that year. I had mixed feelings about getting contacts sophomore year because of this. Have you ever seen a group of high school boys stretching in low-riding Speedos because they think it looks good?! I'd almost rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon.

Water polo is kind of an insane sport. Pretty much anything goes under the water unless the referees notice someone thrashing around in pain. One girl took Liz's shoulders in her hands and rammed her knee into her stomach and left her floating there with the wind knocked out of her. Once when Liz and I were playing on the boys team (senior year we didn't have a girls varsity team but lettered by playing with the boys) I ended up underwater with a large male's knees on my shoulders in the deep end for a long time. The ref finally clued in and that guy got ejected from the game and suspended for the rest of the season. I was slightly disgruntled, so our boys took care of the rest of their team.


I'm number 14; Liz is number 2.

As you can see, most of the time we spent trying not to drown. The girls also spent a significant amount of time zipping our suits up. We had to have someone else cinch the back while we worked the zipper because they were so tight. The suits were zip up because in water polo people try to grab you anywhere they can and having a saggy suit or one with straps is like a handhold. No one had a saggy suit though; those things were cut so they showed way more thigh than anyone is used to seeing and rode up in a way that was not flattering. We also wore two sizes smaller than we ever should have to eliminate drag. They were like vacuum-sealed too, so you couldn't really adjust them once they started creeping up. Yikes.