Dolphins aren’t conditioned to break away from the pack, but three members of a foothills water polo team are dolphins who can swim on their own.
The Dolphins Water Polo Club, based in Okotoks and High River, boasts three Bantam aged players who ply their trade with the Calgary Torpedoes select squad, an outfit about to set course to Victoria for the 15th annual Valentine’s International, Feb. 16-19 at the B.C. capital city’s Commonwealth Place pool.
One of the trio of Torpedoes from the foothills is Zach James Davies, who plays the driver and outlet positions for the Dolphins. The 13-year-old has come a long way since his serendipitous discovery of the aquatic sport on a billboard at the Okotoks Recreation Centre.
“I was going to sign up for Boy Scouts at the time and I thought (water polo) looked cool so I gave it a try,” Davies said. “Ever since then I’ve loved it.”
Davies is fully immersed in the sport now as a member of the Torpedoes, a unit with six training sessions a week. The rigorous schedule is especially beneficial to Davies, an athlete who said it was difficult to adjust to a sport without a background in competitive swimming, a quality a lot of water polo players bring to the pool.
Turner Valley’s Michael Duval, 12, will be joining Davies for the jaunt to Victoria, but doesn’t share his teammates’ relative inexperience in the pool.
Duval, who plays up front at the two or three position for the Dolphins, has four years of competitive swimming to his credit and is a member of the Okotoks Stingrays Summer Swim Club. He said his foundation in the pool gives him an advantage in water polo.
“It’s good because you need to get up the pool really fast because you only have a certain amount of time to shoot,” Duval said of the advantage his strong stroke has on combating the shot clock in water polo.
In fact, the Turner Valley resident and student at John Paul II Collegiate in Okotoks arrived at water polo through an early dalliance with swimming.
“It started off with the Turner Valley swim club and my coach was the Atom coach of the Dolphins (Jen Wakely) and she convinced me to play,” said Duval of his origins in the sport.
Teammate Jacky Tran’s trajectory in water polo paints quite a different picture.
“I went to a different school in High River and my mom just signed me up for it and I thought I’d give it a try,” Tran said. “I found that I enjoyed it, there’s nothing about it that I dislike.”
Tran, who entered water polo void of any competitive swimming experience, admitted he wasn’t originally the best of water polo athletes. However, in four years with the Dolphins, the 13-year-old has made considerable strides in the sport as is clearly reflected by Tran’s inclusion on the Torpedoes select squad.
“I play the utility and outlet position so I’m pretty much driving down to get the ball and get the ball into the goal,” Tran said.
The Dolphins’ skills were on full display at their home tournament, Jan. 14-15 at the Okotoks pool. The Bantam boys team finished at the top of the five-team pack with two wins and one tie to its credit. The Bantam girls squad, composed of four Atom and four Bantam aged athletes, finished fourth in its bracket. The co-ed Atom Dolphins settled for a second place finish in its nine-team division. For more information on the Dolphins Water Polo Club go to www.dolphinswaterpolo.ca.
