An Okotoks water polo standout who got her start with the Prairie Dolphins has swam her way through unchartered waters to an Ivy League school.
Zoe Osborne, a student at Edison School, has been accepted to Harvard University where she will be the first Canadian to ever suit up for the Crimson water polo program when she gets in the pool for the 2013-14 school year.
“I’m really excited just to start a new chapter of my life,” said Osborne, a Grade 12 student. “I’m excited to go somewhere else and see something other than Calgary.”
Applying for spots in NCAA water polo is akin to job hunting as prospective student-athletes submit the best versions of themselves to the academic institutions.
Canadian water polo athletes with dreams of practising the sport south of the border at an American university first create athlete profiles, which read like resumes in the sport, along with a video highlight package from the pool.
“You want to send that out to directly to the coaches rather than the schools to get their attention,” Osborne said. “Sometimes they will email you back, sometimes not.”
Osborne propelled her way onto the Crimson after a strong showing at Kamloops’ Pacific Storm High Performance Water Polo Camp in August.
“It’s an NCAA camp so they teach you how to do all that and there were a couple of NCAA coaches there,” Osborne said. “I gave them my athlete profile when I was there and (the coaches) were impressed with my SAT scores and forwarded them to (Harvard coach Ted Minnis).”
The Edison Eagle first got on the Crimson coach’s radar last February as a member of the Calgary Renegades team which won gold at the Florida Riptides’ international tournament.
“That’s when I first thought of it, but it wasn’t really a big thing back then in February,” Osborne said. “I thought ‘I doubt that’s going to happen.’”
It did.
Osborne scored an astounding 2,190 on the SAT, wrote two more subject SATs for Harvard and two personal essays during the grueling admissions process.
The average score for the SAT — the American university entrance exam — is 1,538. A perfect score is 2,400.
Minnis was impressed with Osborne’s excellence in the pool and in the classroom and subsequently set about recruiting the 17-year-old to join the Cambridge, Mass. school.
By the end of the summer Osborne was a hot commodity south of the 49th parallel and went on campus visits in September to her final three choices of Wagner College, Princeton University and Harvard.
“I decided Harvard was my favourite,” she said. “I really liked all of the girls that I met on the team and stayed with and with the entire atmosphere at Harvard I just felt like I fit in.”
Attending an Ivy League school comes with its financial burdens as Harvard does not endow athletic scholarships. However, a need-based financial aid system at the school has rendered it affordable for the Osbornes.
“There were other schools that indicated that between academic and sports scholarships they could cover all or most of the cost,” said Brent Osborne, Zoe’s father. “But I'm very happy and excited to see Zoe going to Harvard. Water polo aside this is an extraordinary opportunity for an extraordinary person.”
The Grade 12 student, who said she’s never earned a mark below 80 at the Okotoks school, is particularly strong in math and sciences, but is keeping her options open at the prestigious university.
“That’s a good question,” Osborne joked, when asked about her plans for a major. “I’m working on that.”
Her position in the pool is a little more set in stone.
Osborne operates as a hole-check, or central defender, where she uses her speed and agility to cause havoc on the opposition.
“Because I’m a small player a big part of it is mobility,” she said. “I always have to be moving because if I get grabbed or if I start to try and wrestle then I am done for because most of the girls I play against are quite big and strong.”
Being a defensive specialist and an athlete comfortable at either end of the pool also won the Okotokian some supporters among the NCAA coaching ranks.
“I can check, I can play offence and can create opportunities for other people not just myself,” Osborne said. “I think the big thing for Ted is he wants a centre defence so he can solidify the centre of the pool and he can play a press defence.”
She will be joining a Crimson program with a change in tides since Minnis was hired three years ago. The women’s water polo team has posted two consecutive 17 win seasons in the Collegiate Water Polo Association.
“Their ranking is decent, but their program is definitely on the rise,” Osborne said. “Ted started coaching two years ago and they’re getting better each year.”
A trait the program shares with Osborne.
It’s been a remarkable journey for Osborne as she has risen to the upper-echelon of 1995-born female water polo players in the nation.
Osborne first dipped her toes into the water as a four-year-old swimmer with the Okotoks Stingrays Summer Swim Club and serendipitously found a passion for water polo.
“All the girls in swim club that I hung around with starting playing water polo,” said Osborne, who joined the Dolphins at the age of 10. “So my mom made me do water polo one year and after my first game I loved it and I guess I just never stopped.”
