Going Their Own Way : Girls’ Water Polo Players Finally Have Opportunity to Compete Among Themselves

Katie Ferguson was sitting in her bedroom in Mission Viejo as a group of high school athletic administrators in Buena Park were deciding her athletic fate.

It was last spring and the Southern Section council was voting on a proposal to add girls’ water polo as a sport, creating separate girls’ and boys’ teams.

In theory, Southern Section high school water polo teams before this year were considered “co-ed.” In practice, however, they were almost always all-male.

For Ferguson, a senior at Santa Margarita High, the council was deciding between two scenarios for her final season: Another season of struggling for playing time with the predominately male Eagle co-ed team, or a season in which she finally got to play in a league of her own.

The phone rang.

Her mother, Barbara, called her into the kitchen.

“Congratulations,” Barbara said. “It’s a sport.”

Ferguson began to cry.

“For three years, I had been battling with the boys, not the boys on my team, just battling with boys [on other teams],” Ferguson said. “Either they would play harder on me or they would play easier. They wouldn’t just play. There was always something different. . . . Finally, I was just glad that girls had a chance.”

This week, hundreds of girls will jump into pools across the Southland and try out for teams in the inaugural Southern Section-sanctioned girls’ water polo season. Practice begins next week and the first games will be the week of Dec. 2.

The response has been overwhelming--nearly 100 of the Southern Section’s 500 schools have indicated they will field teams this season.

If the sport reaches that number, it would meet the minimum requirement by the Southern Section for staging playoffs and administrators expect playoffs could be held as early as next season.

The Southern Section is one of six sections in the 10-section CIF that currently sanctions a separate girls’ version of the sport. The high schools’ actions follow a burst in popularity in the sport over the last five years during which, according to U.S. Water Polo, the number of girls and women playing it has increased 400% to 7,500 registered participants in clubs across the country.

Significantly, women’s water polo also has had a dramatic surge at the collegiate level in the last five years. Many universities have added the sport in an effort to comply with federal gender-equity regulations.

Many of the new female high school participants have their eyes on the growing pool of college scholarships in the sport.

In the Southern Section, girls who have played on the co-ed teams were given the choice of playing with the boys this fall or with the new girls’ teams in the winter season. All but a handful of the most experienced girls chose to play with the girls’teams.

“It’s two different sports altogether. It’s so hard to explain. It’s just the way things are done, the way you run the drills, it’s all completely different,” said Ferguson, who has played with all-female club teams. “It was my senior year and we had a chance to go far on the girls’ team and I wanted to be a part of that.”

*

Heads bob slightly above the water in the pool at Marina High. They are attentive to Coach Chad Roberts, who is finishing another practice with the boys’ water polo team.

Practice ends and the players glide to the side of the pool and remove their caps.

A shock of long, light brown hair spills out of one of them and Jenny Lamb looks up and smiles.

Lamb is practicing with the Viking boys’ team, as she has done the last two years. But this year she is not competing with them because she wants to compete with the girls’ team this winter.

Under Southern Section rules, it is legal for Lamb to practice the sport during her regularly scheduled P.E. period until girls’ practice begins next week.

Lamb got significant playing time on the freshman-sophomore squad as a freshman and earned some playing time with the varsity last year.

Last year, she got her first experience with high school girls’ water polo when Marina organized a team to play in an exhibition season sponsored by the Sunset League. Led by Lamb and standout Robin Beauregard, who has opted to play with the boys this fall, the Marina girls won the exhibition Southern California High School Water Polo Championships at Irvine High last November.

“I think our season last year with the girls had a lot to do with why I want to play with them again,” Lamb said. “With the boys I am not a star, but with the girls, I have a chance to teach what I know and to be the captain.”

And Lamb, who has played water polo since she was 12, said she saw it almost as a civic duty.

“It’s an upcoming, new sport and I thought I have a lot to offer,” she said.

Marina has always had a strong water polo program and in the past, eight to 10 girls would show up each year to play with the team, mostly on the lower levels. About 35 played last year for the Vikings in the Sunset League exhibition season and Marina Athletic Director Larry Doyle expects about that many this season.

At Los Alamitos, about 70 girls have indicated they will play the sport. Jackie Frank, a junior who has been playing since she was 12, was skeptical at first.

“At first I thought, ‘Oh, it’s just that they want to get in the pool with the boys,’ ” she said, noting she soon realized that was not the case. “I think a lot of people started playing and it was their first year and they thought they could make varsity. It’s a lot more fun than swimming--staring at a black line on the bottom of the pool.”

Frank played for two years at Long Beach Wilson before transferring to Los Alamitos this summer after her parents became unhappy with school’s support of the girls in the sport.

Frank, considered one of the best female goalkeepers in the country, was selected to the U.S. girls’ junior national ‘B’ team in February.

At Wilson, Frank played with the co-ed varsity as well as with an exhibition girls’ team. She is looking forward to playing with the official Griffin girls’ team this season.

“I probably played the same amount of [years] as all of [the boys], but once you go through high school, they start going through puberty and they are a lot better than you,” Frank said. “I couldn’t imagine playing with the boys again this year. I never got to play at all. Even in practices, I would just be the ball girl.”

*

It seems curious that, in an era of economic cutbacks, a high school administrator would support adding a sport.

Sanctioning girls’ water polo meant spending more for coaches, officials and transportation and some administrators still say they have no idea how they are going to pay for it.

At Villa Park High, the sport will be one of three “self-funded” sports along with boys’ volleyball and co-ed golf. Parents help raise funds for these programs.

Doyle, Marina’s athletic director, made the initial proposal for girls’ water polo on behalf of the Sunset League to the Southern Section council at its meeting in January.

Like most administrators interviewed, Doyle said the impetus was the sport’s recent growth at the college level.

“You’ve got something that’s already out there, collegiately, becoming very prominent,” Doyle said. “Although there is not a lot of money out there for new sports, there was definitely the opportunity for some girls to get some scholarships.”

Five years ago, four colleges offered women’s water polo as a varsity sport. This spring, 23 colleges have indicated they will offer it at the varsity level. It’s also being played on the club level at 73 more colleges.

None of the four-year universities in Orange County offer women’s varsity water polo and none have announced plans to add the sport.

Many of the new varsity teams, such as UCLA’s and USC’s, were added in an effort to comply with Title IX, a federal statute that mandates equal opportunity for male and female athletes.

The newly added varsity teams are expected to bring new scholarship opportunities for women: NCAA Division I schools can offer up to eight scholarships to members of their women’s water polo teams--nearly twice as many as the men’s teams can offer.

Officials at U.S. Water Polo expect that in the next few years, women’s college water polo will have the requisite 40 teams to stage an NCAA championship.

Many high school administrators said that, although they were following in the colleges’ footsteps, they were not likewise acting out of a need to come into compliance with Title IX.

“[The Southern Section] was [not] operating out of a mode of a gun to our head. I think we did this for the right reasons, for the positive motivations,” said Jack Clement, El Toro principal and Orange County representative on the Southern Section Executive Committee.

Mimi Frank, Jackie’s mother, had been giving nudges to local athletic officials for at least a year.

Frank circulated a petition in spring 1995 that invoked Title IX and claimed: “co-ed water polo does not provide for an ‘equal playing field’ for the girls.” It was signed by 19 people and Frank said she sent it to the Southern Section.

In January, Frank addressed the Southern Section Council along with Doyle, who made the official proposal. At the next meeting of the council in spring, the sport passed by a majority vote, Assistant Commissioner Bill Clark said.

One of the few points of contention was the season of competition. The benefit to playing in the winter--after the boys’ season--is that it eliminates competition with the boys for pool time, coaches and officials. The drawback is that some of the top swimmers might choose not to compete.

“There are a few girls who are serious swimmers, and it will cut into some of their conditioning time, but for the most part, that’s maybe going to be 1% of the participants,” said Ray Bray, Fountain Valley swimming and water polo coach.

At Fountain Valley, Bray said an average of four girls played co-ed water polo each of the past few years. During the exhibition Sunset League season last year, 30 girls participated and he expects up to 60 girls to play this winter.

He doesn’t expect any of the girls to be daunted by the season’s cold weather.

“We’re going to expect a few rainy days,” Bray said, “But it’s a wet sport anyway, so it doesn’t affect the players, just the coaches and spectators.”