Coronavirus: Olympic water polo stars lobby California to get kids into pool

A  return-to-sports campaign spearheaded by high school football coaches and players’ parents has led to an offshoot group in water polo, a quintessential Californian sport where Olympic stars have joined forces with the kids.

“In a sport like water polo, no one is thinking about us,” five-time Olympian Tony Azevedo said Wednesday. “We’re far from what the governor or anyone is worried about.”

Azevedo, a four-time college player of the year at Stanford, joined Letthemplaywaterpolo as the senior advisor. The grassroots campaign began two weeks ago with two-time Olympian Peter Hudnut, also a Stanford alumnus, and former U.S. women’s Olympic coach Guy Baker joining the advisory team.

The campaign began with five teammates at Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton, said the school’s Griffen Price, one of the country’s most promising goalkeepers.

Price, 17, said teammate Gavin West helped start a petition two weeks ago on change.org urging the wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom to support their cause.  Jennifer Siebel Newsom was a three-sport high school athlete in Marin who had a promising youth soccer career. More than 1,800 had signed the petition by Wednesday evening.

For much of the year lobbying efforts by high school football coaches and parents have kept the pressure on Gov. Newsom and leaders of California’s public health department to change their guidelines when it came to high school sports.

Now Sacramento lawmakers can add the water polo campaign.

On Feb. 8, the water polo group sent Gov. Newsom a letter that it later posted on its website.

Some of the letter’s key points:

— Indoor youth water polo tournaments in Utah and Texas this winter with 5,000 athletes reported no transmissions.

— The effect of chlorine is not limited to the water. Droplets and gas disinfect the surface of the water column, according to the British Sports Medicine Journal and National Institute of Health.

“In water polo, you jump into ‘hand sanitizer’ with the chlorine before you play,” Azevedo said.

Last Thursday, Cal coach Kirk Everist sent Gov. Newsom a letter supporting the campaign.

“The broad national and international evidence—and our own experience—demonstrates that COVID-19 is very rarely if ever, transmitted in the pool,” said Everist, a two-time Olympian who has coached the Golden Bears since 2002.

Azevedo, 39, runs a water polo youth academy from Long Beach and does clinics around the country, including one last week at Foothill High School in Pleasanton.

He said he became concerned with players’ inability to train during the COVID-19 pandemic that has altered almost every aspect of American life.

As he watched water polo continue in other states and Europe, Azevedo said he questioned how the California rules were decided.

“The guidelines they were giving us were like someone made something up while drinking tequila,” he said. “You can pass but not shoot? That doesn’t make sense.”

Azevedo said water polo is such a niche sport that its future is threatened by the shutdown.

“We’re losing coaches,” he said. “Now we’re going to find ourselves a smaller sport and even farther behind the rest of the world. If this is happening in California where water polo is at its strongest, this will have a trickle effect for years.”

California has more water polo players than the other 49 states combined, according to the group. The men’s and women’s U.S. national teams are based in Southern California.

The U.S. Olympic rosters are filled with Californians, including from Stanford and Cal.

Azevedo said the games in Europe and the United States have tested competitors, something that does not take place with all youth sports.

He said the water polo community has followed the source of the positive tests, including two in his academy. Azevedo said none showed transmission in the pool.

He said he had a positive case at a December event in Dallas. Azevedo said it turned out the player had attended a big family Christmas gathering where the transmission occurred.

Azevedo also said California players are at greater risk for not being able to play within the state. He said some are traveling out of state in carpools or taking flights.

Azevedo said it would be safer to keep the kids home playing within leagues or counties. He said officials would have more control to shut down competition if an outbreak occurred.

Price, who resorted to lifting weights at home and hiking during the lockdown, said he and his Sacred Heart teammates would welcome any kind of season this school year.

“We could have a makeshift season, club water polo in the summer and jump right back into a regular fall season,” he said.

For the past month, Price said the players can pass and shoot so they have been working diligently on their conditioning. But in the fall they had to stop and start drills three separate times because of the changing coronavirus landscape.

At one point, Price said he and another goalie resorted to throwing tennis balls at a portable wall at the edge of the pool to work on timing their blocks.

As the players continue to hold out hopes, their motivation has been tested, Price said. But he said he has not seen any of his teammates suffer severe depression.

Price said they try to boost each other with the reminder it’s not a permanent situation.

“These circumstances might not be the greatest but whatever we can do we do it well,” Price said.