A Challenge? Delgadillo Ready to Dive In

One day, Juan Delgadillo might gather his grandchildren around a rocking chair and tell a story that will produce laughter and disbelief.

It takes place when Delgadillo was 7. A friend invited him to try out for the novice swim team at a city pool in Santa Monica.

One problem: Delgadillo didn’t know how to swim.

“I had never taken a swimming lesson,” he said. “The coach took me aside and said, ‘Swim a lap.’ I was like, ‘Does he know that I don’t know how to swim?’ ”

Delgadillo had been in the shallow part of a pool to dip his feet. He also had watched his two older sisters swim. But he was told, not asked. “So I went for it,” he said.

Delgadillo didn’t drown. He improvised so well that the coach put him on the team.

“Every day since, I’ve been committed to swimming,” he said.

Delgadillo has grown to 6 feet 3, 180 pounds. A senior, he leads North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake High’s 13-1 water polo team with 39 goals.

Said Coach Rich Corso: “He likes challenges. That’s part of his personality. I’m lucky he went to [the pool] instead of football or soccer.”

Delgadillo is the first Latino to play water polo in Corso’s 17 years at Harvard-Westlake. He transferred to the school after his freshman year at Santa Monica High. He remembers being the only Latino on campus as a sophomore.

“It was kind of weird,” he said. “The next year, there were others, then five. I had to study more and find friends outside water polo. That was hard. Most [of the students] were curious to see where I was from, where I grew up.”

His parents were born in Mexico. His father runs a clothing business in Los Angeles.

Harvard-Westlake, with its $18,500 per-year tuition, isn’t often a destination for minorities. “Not that many Hispanics apply to this school,” Delgadillo said. “I only knew the school because of water polo.”

Thanks to a high grade-point average and financial aid, Delgadillo was able to enroll at the school, where he has fit in and flourished. He was first-team All-Southern Section selection in water polo as a junior and is considering attending such schools as Stanford, California or UCLA.

“He’s a great role model,” Corso said.

Coming to Harvard-Westlake was almost a leap of faith for Delgadillo. His friends in Santa Monica didn’t want him to leave.

“They were bummed,” he said.

During his interview to enter Harvard-Westlake, Delgadillo said he was told, “Most people with 4.0 grade-point averages don’t get in.”

But he also knew that the school “wanted a growing population of minorities.”Only 3.5% of Harvard-Westlake’s 1,558 students, grades seven through 12, are Latinos.

Headmaster Thomas Hudnut said there has been much discussion about increasing student diversity.

“People don’t understand we have a $3.5-million financial-aid budget,” he said. “Things are possible.”

Delgadillo already understands how sports and education are opening doors for his future. Math is his best subject, environmental science is his favorite, and playing water polo is what makes him happy.

“It’s very physical,” he said. “You have to learn how to swim and pass, and there’s a lot of technique. We don’t wear helmets. We get a lot of scratches and bruises.”

Delgadillo is a crucial contributor on a team that lost to Long Beach Wilson in last year’s Division I final and lost to Wilson, 10-7, in last weekend’s championship game of the S & R Sport Cup. The two schools meet again Saturday at Harvard-Westlake in a nonleague game.

Delgadillo is a future college athlete and will never forget that fateful day when he jumped into a pool not knowing if he could stay afloat, let alone swim.

“That’s where it all started, swimming that one lap,” he said.

Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.