In a transfer that instantly impacts the fortunes of collegiate water polo in our nation’s largest metropolis, Lengthy Island College (LIU) introduced earlier at present that Bret Lathrope—who has performed for and labored at a few of the nation’s finest collegiate packages—agreed to be the varsity’s inaugural males’s water polo coach.
[Lathrope Announced as Men’s Water Polo Head Coach]
A standout for UCLA, the place from 2009–2012 he competed on three NCAA qualifiers, Lathrope is well-traveled in polo circles on each coasts in addition to in Europe. After graduating, in 2014 he served as an assistant to Head Coach Daniel Leyson at UC-Davis. In 2015, he traveled to Barcelona, Spain for a stint enjoying professionally for Agrupacio Esportiva Santa Eulalia. He returned stateside in 2016 to be an assistant to John McBride at Bucknell, then in 2017 landed at Massachusetts Institute of Know-how as an assistant to Dave Andriole.
Lathrope enjoying for UCLA males’s polo. Picture Courtesy: UCLA Athletics
When Andriole unexpectedly give up, Lathrope discovered himself at age 27 as head coach of a males’s DIII polo program at arguably probably the most academically achieved college in America. The 2018 MIT season was a revelation; regardless of a roster together with 12 undergraduates in a bunch of 17, Lathrope led the Engineers to a decent 10-13 report, together with three wins towards Northeast Water Polo Convention foe Iona, one within the NWPC Championships.
Regardless of this success, Lathrope jumped once more, becoming a member of Head Coach Adam Wright as an assistant on the Bruins’ males’s teaching workers. UCLA didn’t qualify for NCAAs in 2019—the primary time this occurred since 2013. Following a 12 months in Westwood, in 2021 he landed in Lengthy Seashore State on Gavin Arroyo’s males’s group workers. At this newest cease, the 49ers loved a 20-6 report and certified for NCAAs by advantage of a win within the Golden Coast Convention (GCC) championships.
In taking up a brand new program in New York, Lathrope faces an uphill climb completely totally different from difficult burgeoning rocket scientists to achieve success in one of many hardest intercollegiate sports activities. Males’s polo in New York Metropolis shouldn’t be almost on the stage that he skilled as a highschool star in Miramonte Excessive Faculty in Northern California or as a participant for UCLA.
With the arrival of the Shark males, there at the moment are 5 packages within the area; Fordham within the Bronx; Iona Faculty in New Rochelle; St. Francis Brooklyn—ten blocks from LIU’s downtown Brooklyn campus—and Wagner Faculty on Staten Island.
Of the 4 established packages, solely Fordham and St. Francis have ever superior to NCAAs. Fordham contains a deep-deep pool, however the different packages within the area compete in shallow-deep amenities of doubtful high quality, starting from a four-foot-deep shallow finish at Iona to 5 and a half toes at St. Francis. LIU’s pool, inbuilt 2005, ranges from 9 to 4 toes deep; it’s shallowest finish is a problem for male polo athletes that vary in peak from 6-2 to 6-6. But it surely has not been an impediment to this point for LIU’s girls’s program, launched in 2019. Sharks Head Coach Gabrielle Juarez has loved success at dwelling, posting 3-0 report final 12 months whereas a profitable the 2021 Metro Atlantic Athletic Convention (MAAC) common season title in solely this system’s second 12 months.
[Sharks Make History: LIU Women’s Water Polo Wins First-Ever Home Match]
Pool issues and usually dealing with the East’s finest program’s are points Lathrope’s group might want to overcome. No determination has but been made for the place the Sharks will compete, both within the Northeast Water Polo Convention (NWPC), which incorporates MIT and St. Francis in addition to Ivy League members Brown, Harvard, Princeton and DIII Connecticut Faculty, or the Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Convention. The MAWPC contains Bucknell, Fordham, George Washington, Johns Hopkins, Mount St. Mary’s, Navy and Wagner.
LIU girls’s warming up of their pool’s shallow finish. Picture Courtesy: LIU Athletics
Neither the MAWPC or NWPC—each providing an automated NCAA berth—provides a transparent path to a nationwide championship. The previous six years Harvard and Princeton have alternately captured the NWPC title, whereas Fordham, after by no means qualifying in 70 years of intercollegiate play, received the MAWPC title final season and a first-ever NCAA berth. Previous to the Rams’ win, Bucknell and George Washington took turns representing the convention within the postseason.
[Fan in the Stands: A Bronx Water Polo Tale]
Regardless of not being a location for expertise—Clyde Huibregtse, who Lathrope coached at MIT, is one of some New Yorkers to have not too long ago performed collegiate polo within the Northeast—the brand new LIU coach arrives at an auspicious time for NYC polo. Greenwich Aquatics in Connecticut, the highest age group program on this coast and one of many nation’s finest, has begun producing DI-ready athletes, a few of whom Lathrope would like to welcome to Brooklyn.
[On The Record with Ulmis Iordache, Greenwich Water Polo Coach]
Pennsylvania stays a fertile territory for uncooked expertise, sponsoring a state highschool championship that features dozens of groups together with North Penn Excessive Faculty from the Philadelphia suburbs, the place Head Coach Jason Grubb’s girls and boys swept the 2021 state titles.
There may be additionally a glut of highschool expertise at the moment all through the nation searching for to match with colleges, the results of the COVID-19 pandemic which supplied collegiate women and men in all NCAA sports activities an additional 12 months of eligibility on account of play being suspended for a lot of 2020. Lathrope, with connections in each the East and West—in addition to a possible pipeline to European expertise—ought to have the ability to shortly assemble a group. He’ll must; first ball drop for LIU males’s polo takes place in September, lower than eight months from now.
