|
|
Water Polo So many days I have spent doing something that my future doesn’t hold in store for me, such as soccer, basketball, and baseball, just to name a few. All that time I always knew that I was an athlete. There was so much talent that my little body possessed, but I just couldn’t come up with the right way to use it. While I always had fun playing those sports, there was always something missing. I loved the camaraderie, the leadership, the team bonding, and I even loved the discipline, I just never had the love for the sport. I never had the desire to go into my backyard by myself and practice to the point of keeling over. My father always told me that if I wanted to go anywhere in sports, that is what I ha to do. I tried to take his advice but I would end up being outside for ten minutes and get bored. I started to give up, maybe sports are just something that would act as a high school activity and that would be the end of it. Luckily for me, that whole idea ended because of my sophomore swim class. I had always hated swimming. I hated to get into the water and swim laps. My entire body would be sore and I felt like I was getting nowhere. There was no ball for me to play with, and no goal for me to reach. It always seemed completely and utterly pointless. That is one of the reasons that I wasn’t excited at all about swim class. Sure my friends were there with me, but if I wanted to get a good grade I couldn’t goof around. So the first day we did laps, this is great I thought the same old boring stuff. The second day we did laps again. I was bored out of my mind; it was just another thing that I was doing that I won’t in my future. Finally we started to do more things. We started to play some games such as water volleyball and under water hockey. I finally started to have fun, but the real fun didn’t start until the first day that we played water polo. I remember thinking to myself that it was going to be another boring thing. You can’t move fast in the water, and you can’t stand when you are throwing the ball making it harder to throw faster. We practiced some techniques such as dribbling and shooting. That is when I realized that there was actually something to the game, it definitely wasn’t easy. In order to dribble I had to keep the ball in front of me and swim free style causing splashes to push the ball forward. I was only allowed to ever touch the ball with one hand at a time. The ball was wet and slippery making the technique very difficult to grasp onto. When shooting, I couldn’t touch the ground with my feet which made it more difficult to aim and throw hard. The more we learned, the more difficult it was. I was having so much fun in my water polo class that I began to regain some hope. I thought maybe there is actually something that I can use my athletic ability on. I couldn’t wait to learn more about the sport. I went straight home and decided to do some research. I couldn’t believe all the different associations that I found. There were so many names that I couldn’t keep track. There were even some places that I could join to enhance my skill level. There is the USA Water Polo INC, the Collegiate Water Polo Association, the Australian Water Polo INC, the National Water Polo League, the New Zealand Water Polo Association, and many more. I also learned that water sports first became a very popular thing in England.
|
