Swimming Upstream : Girl Water Polo Players Hope Ventura District Will Fund Separate Teams for Them

All they want is a team of their own.

A record number of girls at Ventura and Buena high schools plan to play water polo at the two schools in the coming school year.

The surge in popularity in what was once mainly a male sport comes after a decision by the California Interscholastic Federation to make water polo an official winter sport for high school girls.

“Guys have their own teams so we should have our own, too,” said 16-year-old Molly Wingland, a junior at Buena High and a water polo goalie. “Girls should be able to play against girls.”

But school officials have yet to decide whether they can come up with the money to hire coaches, buy equipment and cover transportation for a girls team at each of the two high schools in time for the November-to-February winter season.

“I think the chances are probably at least even that it will get funded for this year,” said Pat Chandler, Ventura Unified School District’s assistant superintendent for educational services. “It was never a matter of whether we were going to do it. It was a matter of when we were going to do it.”

Chandler said she thinks that the district’s board will vote on the issue in September.

But with the start of school little more than a month away, the nearly 40 players are starting to worry that they might be left high and dry as other schools in the region throw their support behind the new winter sport.

“It seems like we are going backwards,” said 17-year-old Jordana Gustafson, a Ventura High senior and one of 26 girls practicing there this summer for the girls water polo team that they hope will become a reality. “We’ve never had so many people for a team and now it seems like we may not have one.”

Jordana and Molly were among the dozens of water polo players who packed a district board meeting last week, pleading with officials to come up with money to pay for the girls teams.

Until a few years ago, girls at the two high schools competed on the boys teams, vying for playing time with teammates who were often faster swimmers and stronger throwers.

More recently, as more young women have taken up the sport, they have formed club teams and have competed with girls teams at other schools.

But under the winter sport designation, girls teams from the two high schools would play in the Channel League, which includes three schools in Santa Barbara County and three high schools in the Oxnard district.

Bill Clark, an official with the California Interscholastic Federation, which regulates high school sports, said the three Santa Barbara-area high schools have already established winter teams.

Oxnard Union High School District officials said Wednesday that Oxnard, Hueneme and Rio Mesa high schools have still not decided whether they will join the league.

Joseph Spirito, Ventura Unified’s superintendent, said his district has hardly rejected the idea of paying for the two teams. But he said next year’s school budgets have already been set, making it a little harder for officials to make girls water polo happen this year.

“It is not as easy as it appears,” Spirito said. “You have to work out all of the logistics of it.”

School officials said they have not worked out estimates on the cost of paying for the sport during this first winter season.

However, Erik Gustafson, Jordana’s father, estimates it would cost about $5,000 to hire a girls coach, heat the pool and cover transportation.

But Gustafson, also a teacher and swim coach at Rio Mesa High, said the cost should not be a deterrent because federal regulations may compel the schools to offer girls water polo.

“If the school funds a boys sport, then the school is obligated to provide funding for an equal girls sport,” Gustafson said of Title IX regulations that require institutions that receive federal money to provide equal opportunities in sports for men and women.

Some parents and girl players have argued that playing on the boys team is not an “equal opportunity.” Many male players, they say, can out-swim females in a sport notorious for being rough.

But Chandler disagreed.

“I think I could make a convincing case that we are meeting the letter of the law of Title IX,” she said.

If the district does not come through with the money this year, Ventura player Melissa Hall said, the girls from the two high schools may be stuck playing with the boys again in the fall while other girls teams compete in the winter.

“We’ll have nobody really to play with,” said the 17-year-old, who hopes to get a women’s water polo scholarship from one of the estimated 40 colleges that offer such grants.

Melissa added that the players are serious about organizing official teams.

“We will work, sponsor fund-raisers, do whatever we can,” said Melissa, the captain of Ventura High’s girls club team. “There is no reason we shouldn’t have what the boys have.”