Saratoga News
Sports
Polo players face challenges on summer trip to Hungary
By Mike Barnhart
After the Los Gatos boys water polo team claimed a 5-4 win over Mountain View last week, opposing coach Rafael Alapont had mixed emotions. He was disappointed that the Spartans had suffered their first loss of the league season, but happy for several of the victorious Wildcats.
"My high school team just lost to my club team," Alapont recalled, two days after his Mountain View squad was knocked off by a team with several players who played internationally in Europe for him this past August.
Representing the West Valley Water Polo Club, a contingent of 12 players and two coaches traveled, trained and competed during a tour of Hungary. After many weeks of preparation, a regimen that featured three-hour practice sessions on weekdays and tournaments or scrimmages on weekends, coaches Alapont and Don Appleton led a dozen young water polo players on a trip to Segled, Hungary.
"It was a great experience, definitely a new one for all of us," Alapont reported. "The boys were staying in a hostel, dealing with the language barrier. Nobody spoke Hungarian."
In the pool, the team had a couple of other challenges--first, the time change, then the faster and more physical play of the international game.
"On the first day, they adjusted to the time change and it didn't take long to get used to the international style of play," Alapont explained of the West Valley club players, who ranged in age from 14 to 18. "The team trained with a local Hungarian team each day."
The core of the squad featured four current members of the Los Gatos program: senior Scott Werner, juniors John DiSalvo and Danny Lyles and frosh-soph competitor Jacob Warkov. Other team members included Saratoga senior Kevin Cho and two Willow Glen teammates, junior Charlie Kane and sophomore Sam Brandt. Players from Mountain View, Hollister and Archbishop Mitty rounded out the squad.
The training was capped by a tournament, in which the West Valley squad placed fourth in its bracket. Lyles, the team's primary two-meter hole player and leading scorer, earned the team's Most Valuable Player honor.
Besides competition and training, the club went on sightseeing trips to the cities of Budapest and Szentes. The trip, which cost an average of $2,300 per member of the traveling party, will be expanded next summer to include two West Valley teams and four European countries, Alapont noted.
"We didn't do much fundraising at all for this trip, but next year it would be great to get some local sponsors," Alapont said of next summer's trip to Spain, Germany, Croatia and Hungary.
The West Valley Water Polo Club, directed by West Valley College coach Bruce Boxill, "has really improved the quality of play among our high schools," Alapont said.
