Back in early 2020, countries, regions, islands, states, counties, cities, companies, and universities started to close due to the Covid pandemic.
In the State of California, similar to many other places throughout the United States and around the world, schools shut down. Administrators and teachers transitioned to distance education models where students learned virtually – or not at all.
For most, this was a traumatic change from what student were used to doing and had come to expect when it came to education and their extracurricular activities. By the fall of 2020, some high schools across the United States allowed their students to participate in sports while others cancelled or postponed their sport programs due to concerns regarding Covid transmission.
But one special group of girls decided to take the initiative. They played water polo at Los Alamitos High School in Southern California. Their school was closed. Their campus was off limits. They had a brand new 50 meter pool that went unused.
So despite the water being between 12 – 14°C, the Southern California girls who are so comfortable in warm chlorinated pools started to workout in the Pacific Ocean.
Every day, they walked, biked or took vehicles to the shoreline. It was not easy, but the teenagers showed grit and determination – while smiling and keeping fit. They could not be together in their school classrooms, but they enjoyed the company of their teammates on the sand and in the salt water.
The water was cold. The dolphins were out. The waves were occasionally much larger than they enjoyed. But their group grew week by week. From the first day they were only able to swim in and out within 150 meters. Gradually, they acclimated to the conditions and the marine life. The first time they saw a dolphin in the water, they screamed and swam to shore in terror. But the next time they saw dolphins skimming the surface among them, the girls chased the dolphins and yelled with joy.
Over time, the pandemic and quarantines were over and the girls grew to young women.
They continued to train and play water polo. Now, five years after those unexpected experiences throughout the pandemic, the women have grown and matured, showing the same degree of leadership and grit that they enabled them to take to the Pacific Ocean while the state-mandated quarantines changed the lives.
Their team – one of the more than 500 USA Water Polo clubs in America – and the players – a small fraction of the more than 50,000 players competing in scholastic water polo in America – could be quite unique.
Under Coach Dave Carlson at Los Alamitos High School, it is remarkable that five of them are currently serving as the captains of their respective NCAA Division I women’s water polo teams:
- Shanna Davidson, Princeton University (see here)
- Jazmine Sandoval, McKendree university (see here)
- Isabel Valaika, University of California, Santa Barbara (see here)
- Sydney Munatones, UC San Diego (see here)
- Sofia Munatones, UC San Diego (see here)
The rest of their high school team (and their club water polo teammates) are also still competing in the sport, either as juniors or seniors including
- Lindsay Harris at University of California, Berkeley (see here)
- Joey Niz at UCLA (see here)
- Livvie Ouellette at UCLA (see here)
- Cici DeLuca at Stanford University (see here)
- Olivia Slavens at University of Hawaii (see here)
- Caylah Olay at St. Francis University (see here, also a team captain)
- Avary Torres at Santa Clara University (see here)
- Zoë Seaboch at Marist University (see here)
The young women stuck with the sport during the pandemic, weathered various challenges in high school, and honed their time-management skills while representing their schools around their hard academic schedules.
That grit showed up big-time in the cold, rough waters of Huntington Beach and Seal Beach.
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