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Oberlin College Water Polo |
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A Brief History
OC Water Polo was originally founded for only one purpose: to beat Kenyon College. Kenyon, a well respected perennial Division III swimming powerhouse (20 consecutive National Champions as of 1999), was the home town of the first-year Mike Heithaus. "What better way" he reasoned, "to boost our egos than to beat a team that could swim us into the ground?" And so it came to be that Oberlin, annually (until 1998) played Kenyon in the spring. Oberlin in the mean time entered a few tournaments, and developed a healthy rivalry with UAkron and ONU, and became acquainted with the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA). In the fall of 1996, Oberlin began it's first season as a CWPA team, where the largely unexperienced team, led by sophomores Steinhauer and Remley and Juniors Nate Bonheimer and Wayne Miller, was soundly thumped and placed dead-last. But the sprits remained unbroken, and Oberlin carried on. In the spring of 1997, a strong display (for Oberlin) against Navy and OSU gave Oberlin further hope. By fall of 1997, things had began strongly but faded, and again Oberlin placed dead-last at CWPA conferences, with an ironman team of 5 starters, a swimmer who recognized a water polo ball, and (no joke) a goalkeeper who could barely swim and had acid flashbacks in goal. But Spring 1998 proved better, and Oberlin recognized the promise within them with a strong finish in the Ohio State Spring Classic.
In the fall of 1998, that promise bloomed. Armed with all-time leading scorer Mitch Wyman, Oberlin pounced on Kalamazoo, and stunned the CWPA Midwest North division by placing second in the division, and 5th overall in the conference, an improvement of 6 places over the previous year. The new Oberlin College Water Polo was born. Oberlin plans to improve only further: stronger focus on recruiting, improving the press defense and increasing shooting frequency promise to make Oberlin even better, a definite contender to move up again in the Conference in the Fall of 1999.
Several years went by whilst the team underwent a hiatus and had no updates made on this little web site, and recruiting nearly ceased to exist, and very few acutally kept it alive, to the point of Oberlin getting the boot from the CWPA in our 2003-2004 season for having "staged" a forfeit at a tournament due to severely lacking numbers. However Oberlin still did not die! We kept on fighting and paid our dues in 2003-2004 even though we were not allowed to compete in any tournaments and were truly shunned by the association. We came back in full spirits this past 2004-2005 season and went to every match, didn't forfeit any, and ended up placing 4th at the conference championships; out of 5!!! We are looking forward to an even better and stronger season in 2005-2006!
Oberlin College Water Polo was technically founded in 1991, although its present incarnation didn't develop until spring of 1996.