Water polo is a team water sport, which can be best described as a combination of swimming, football, basketball, ice hockey, rugby and wrestling. A team consists of six field players and one goalkeeper. The goal of the game resembles that of football – to score as many goals as possible in the time provided.
Water Polo provides a wonderful complement to the sport of swimming. Water Polo is not detrimental to the process of learning to swim or competitive swimming. On the contrary, the game helps to build swimming strength and endurance. It also provides an excellent opportunity to stay in shape when you are learning to swim and works as a much-needed break from the rigors of competitive swim training. Water Polo here comes as a welcome relief and helps to maintain an interest in swimming for some athletes who otherwise may have quit the sport.
Skills needed for Water Polo
- Supreme comfort in the water is the most fundamental water polo skill. Being able to stay high above the water “vertically” using a leg skill called the “eggbeater” is vital to playing the game.
- Children in water polo become very adept at using the ‘eggbeater’. Polo teaches many of these skills without expecting a young player to perform them in deep water. It is easier and more fun to teach the actual game in an environment where a child can still touch the bottom of the pool.
- Among the many skills in and out of the water that a player will need, competitive swimming or sprinting is another component. Competitive swimming instruction in the form of Power Swimming is part of our curriculum.
- Water Polo players become naturally fast sprinters through Power Swimming practices that constitute an important building block of Water Polo.