Michael Pisano College Essay

We are swimmers with balls. said every water polo shirt from a tournament, ever. Water polo is a sport where they too one sport and said lets play it in the water. !oing into the sport you"d thin it suc s by using the logic that swimming is the worst sport ever. #f you thought this you would be really wrong. $his is because water polo is the fun version of swimming. #"ve played the sport for % years and # love it. # started playing the sport because # swam my whole life and needed something to do in the fall so # wouldn"t get hefty &fat'. My first year was probably my favorite year playing because of the sole fact of we were a winning team. We almost made it to the state tournament, but we lost at regionals because of a lot of bad calls. Even the (unior )arsity team was successful. # was selected to be a goalie my first year because my whole family is tall, and you could see # was well on my way &my dad is *"+ my sister is *", and my brother is *"-' $he varsity goalie that year was an ama.ing goalie and the best in the state his /unior year of high school and was planning to go to the 0aval 1cademy. 1t the beginning of practice, the other two goalies and # would warm up separate from the rest of the team. We would tread with weight belts on to increase our leg strength. We would do drills where we tread with a ic board out in front of us to increase resistance, we would tread out as high as we can for a full length of the pool, and we would tread with our arms up. 1fter this we would put in a goal to do /umps to reach the corners of the net. # was second () goalie so # would play the second half of games. My sophomore year # played () goalie for the first half of the season, then # switched over to playing in the field because we got a new varsity goalie from a random person on the varsity field s2uad so the other goalie played () goalie. # would still practice with the goalies so # had stronger legs which # would use to my advantage. 1fter that season # told my coach, 3ob 4ala, that # would switch to

playing in the field full games and play defensive hole set. My coach agreed that # should because somebody needed to step up because the senior that played that position had graduated. $hat summer # went out to 5niversity of California 4anta 3arbara for water polo camp to get better at what # did. 1t camp # would practice for -.6 hours a day and then go to the beach for another 7.6 hours and hang out. #n practice we did many drills to protect the ball, steal the ball from others, and to have better ball handling s ills. $he camp was run by the 4anta 3arbara coach and % time 8lympian Wolf Wigo. 9e was in the pool with us every day to show us the s ills not to /ust tell us what to do. # believe that camp was the most important time in all my years because going out to California is one of the most important things you can do as a polo player in another state. $he players in California are at a completely different level, and /ust playing polo with them will get you better at it. When # came bac from camp # was starting varsity and playing full games.