I love the cold but there is nothing I hate more than swimming in a cold pool. I always feel like I am going to freeze to death, which  made learning water polo with my friend Kate Tripiano (12) even more difficult than I had anticipated. 

Recently, I have been allowing the athlete teaching me to choose which skill they think I should learn since they are the experts. Tripiano has been swimming since she was 3 and has played water polo for five years, so I trusted her wholeheartedly. She then told me that she was going to teach me egg-beating since it was the basis of everything they do in water polo. So to start, we sat on the ledge of the pool and she showed me how I had to move my legs with my left leg going clockwise and my right leg going counterclockwise in order to recreate the motion of an actual eggbeater. 

Once I got a basic understanding of what I was going to be doing, I felt confident that I would be able to quickly get the hang of it in the water. We made our way into the pool, and after a long endeavor of getting used to the cold, we made our way toward the “deep” end which was only 5 feet. But, at my very tall height of 5’3” I was on my tiptoes while at 5’6”, Tripiano was able to stand confidently on her feet. 

While we were in the water, Tripiano kept telling me that once I started trying to egg-beat I would feel warmer, so I made my first attempt and I was definitely struggling to keep my head over the surface. To help with that, Tripiano taught me sculling, where you basically wave your arms in a horizontal motion inwards and outwards, like a figure eight. However, whenever I tried to do that, my instincts would have me do more of a flapping bird motion in the water to keep me upright. After maybe 20 minutes of trying to get the motion down, I was already running out of breath. Without any leg muscle at all, I was questioning how I got to this point in my life. I could not imagine doing this while also trying to throw a ball and having other people trying to push me down into the pool. Then Tripiano told me that the team practices six days a week for two hours, and I quite literally applauded her right then and there. I was in awe. 

“I have been doing this since a young age, so it comes naturally to me,” Tripiano said. “I think it’s all about how much you practice and build that habit of [egg-beating].”

However, eventually, I was able to get the motion down (or so Tripiano claimed) and then she started to run down the steps of how to propel yourself upwards when you want to throw or block the ball during a game. She said all you had to do was start egg-beating as fast as you could and then do a breaststroke motion to bring yourself out of the water. The concept went completely over my head, and I had to keep asking her to explain before I made my attempt. Despite moving my legs as fast as I could, I was only able to get my chin barely above the water.

Before this experience, I already felt a sense of awe for water polo players after hearing all of Tripiano’s stories from games, but afterward my appreciation and respect for what they do increased tenfold.