Welcome to Del Mar Water Polo!
You may not know it, but this is the first year EVER in the proud history of Del Mar aquatics that there is a water polo team.
Since you probably don’t know much about it, this page is going to teach you a little bit about the game. More pages will teach a lot more details as well as conditioning and fitness drills you can do at home to get ready for the season.
Probably the most important skill you need to be successful in water polo is to be able to swim. However, most of polo doesn’t require you to put your face in the water.
And while being fast helps, being smart is better.
The swimming skills you’ll need are:
Freestyle
Breaststroke
Backstroke
Treading water (It’s all played in deep water, so you must be comfortable swimming in water over your head.)
There is a lot of body contact in water polo. It is a physical sport.
I believe for women it is arguably the most physical sport for them to play.
For men, football and rugby have more collisions but there’s a lot of contact, especially at the higher levels.
Water polo is a “flow” sport which means the action goes back and forth quickly, just like in soccer or basketball.
If you understand positioning and passing in soccer, you’ll understand it will for water polo.
Also, there are goalies and cages and goalies can use two hands…just like in soccer.
Like soccer, there’s a lot of similarities with basketball as well.
In water polo, usually the tallest and biggest player is called a “hole set”. This is very similar to the center in basketball.
The quick movements, screens and pick-and-rolls are similar too.
Another similarity is that there is a shot clock which plays an important part in game strategy.
Another physical, flow sport with goalies and water, water polo has something else in common with hockey…
There are kick out fouls and player down situations just like in hockey.
Water polo requires a strong and accurate throwing arm. It needs to be accurate for good passing. It needs to be strong for scoring goals.
Baseball and softball players usually have excellent throwing skills. And this is something that a lot of beginning players need to work on.
If you’ve played baseball and/or softball you will have an “arm” up on a lot of competitors.
So there you have it…all the skills you’ll need to play the great game of water polo.
The next page will go into detail about the game and some of the rules. You can click the link here to jump to it. (insert link here)