Personal Essay: Water Polo

Water polo. I’ve participated in Marching Band, Track & Field, Soccer, and Cross Country, but I have never had an athletic experience so mentally and physically taxing than playing on a water polo team.

I had just completed my junior year of high school, and I realized that I had not done too much that stood out, or that was so spontaneous or interesting that I wanted to write about in my college essay. I wanted to not only have something original and interesting to write about, I wanted a great memory of the time that I did something wild. So I decided on water polo. There was a club nearby and I thought it would be a fun thing to try over the summer. I had had no experience whatsoever playing the sport, but I was a strong swimmer, so I thought it couldn’t be

I learned something very quickly that day. I was terrible at water polo. My whole body was sore the next day, and I deeply regretted ever joining the team. Still, I went to and participated in all the practices, much to my body’s protest, and worked hard to make my terrible stamina and coordination a little less terrible. We had a few games and overall it was considered a successful season. I can say that I not only learned a thing or two about water polo and commitment, and I made some great friends. Altogether though I did not consider the experience a success. I only scored one goal the entire season and I was arguably the least skilled water polo player on the team. It was not necessarily the exciting experience that I wanted to tell my friends about, and to be honest the whole experience did not encourage me to want to try anything new or ‘exciting’ this summer. I just wanted to go back home and spend the rest of my summer on my couch with my dogs. But at the end of the last game, our coach asked to speak with me. She told me that she could tell that I was a little discouraged, and even though I wasn’t an incredible water polo player I had the best work