Because worlds is u18 and u16 next year the oldest year for u18 is 2008
Anacdotally, I think the European age group championship occurs also on even years, but the age cut is U19, U17, U15. Between Worlds and European even age group has an opportunity. This is smart and continuously develops talent across all age groups.
I am not sure how PanAm works, but stagerring the age groups might be an improvement and addresses the ‘disadvantege’ of odd year DOB.
Interesting information. Probably, not a surprise, but I ran some numbers.
| Club | Dev | Cadet | Youth | Grand Total | 18s Finish | 16s Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Del Mar Water Polo Club | 14 | 10 | 8 | 32 | 2 | |
| Channel Islands United | 9 | 7 | 9 | 25 | 12 | 11 |
| Mission Water Polo Club | 10 | 8 | 5 | 23 | 2 | 24 |
| Greenwich Aquatics | 7 | 7 | 7 | 21 | 11 | 7 |
| Stanford Water Polo Foundation | 8 | 7 | 4 | 19 | 15 | 6 |
| American River Water Polo Club | 5 | 9 | 5 | 19 | 9 | |
| Texas Thunder Water Polo Club | 4 | 7 | 7 | 18 | 22 | |
| CC United | 4 | 8 | 5 | 17 | 3 | 3 |
| San Diego Shores Water Polo Club | 4 | 9 | 2 | 15 | 7 | 8 |
| Los Angeles Premier | 6 | 6 | 3 | 15 | 4 | 5 |
| Newport Beach Water Polo | 3 | 3 | 6 | 12 | 1 | 1 |
| Trojan Water Polo (Ca) | 3 | 4 | 5 | 12 | 16 | 8 |
| La Jolla United WPC | 10 | 2 | 12 | 17 | ||
| Lamorinda Water Polo | 3 | 6 | 3 | 12 | 18 | |
| Shore Aquatics | 2 | 5 | 3 | 10 | 15 | |
| Vanguard Aquatics | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 13 | |
| Carlsbad Water Polo | 5 | 2 | 7 | 19 | ||
| NORCAL - Northern California Aquatics | 7 | 7 | 16 | |||
| SOCAL Water Polo Foundation | 1 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 10 |
| Pride Water Polo Academy | 5 | 2 | 7 | 19 | ||
| San Francisco Water Polo Club Warriors | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 22 | 20 |
| Sleepy Hollow Aquatics | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 20 | 18 |
| Team Vegas Water Polo | 1 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 13 | |
| Diablo Alliance Water Polo | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 4 | |
| 680 Water Polo | 2 | 4 | 6 | 10 | ||
| Orange County Water Polo Club | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 21 | |
| Atherton Water Polo Club | 2 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 14 | |
| CT Premier Water Polo Club | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 14 | |
| South Coast Water Polo Club | 2 | 1 | 3 | 21 | ||
| San Jose Express Water Polo | 1 | 1 | 23 | 17 |
Some clubs like SOCAL and several PAC zone clubs, seem to have sent fewer kids then you might expect to the championships. Oahu, Thunder and Greenwich are over represented due to the number of clubs from their zones. This doesn’t tell us how many tried out for the zone teams. Knowing that would help understand how many are actually trying out and if there may be any bias toward certain clubs.
CIU sent 25 kids and finished 11 & 12 while LA Premier in the same zone sent 15 after finishing in the top 5 (I understand that other LA Premier kids were rostered and dropped). CCU sent 17 finishing 3rd at both ages. Newport finished 1st and only sent 12 (many kids played both ages and no seniors came).
I’d argue that many clubs are actually way over represented than any that are under represented. 14 development aged kids at Del Mar made it this far to try out for the national team? SF finished in the low 20s and sent 6 kids. That relationship makes sense to me. It could be that the expectations of the players and parents at the clubs that only send a handful of players are more reasonable than others.
Got it. Thanks.I’m not sure if that was explicit to 2007 across the zones to be honest. Maybe it was, but I wonder. I assume most parents on here are some of those that do more research than those that don’t. I was not aware but had not thought about it to be honest.
The over repreesented clubs you mentioend (Ohau, Thunder, and Greenwich) are the ‘Zones’ HAW, SWZ, NEZ as their clubs dominate the zone. The zone structure of ODP leads to this outcome.
In previous post I suggested switching ODP to a ‘Draft’ structure with 12 equal teams. In particular at the Youth level. There is at least 80%+ overlap between the boys selected to Youth NTSC this year and the last year Cadets NTSC.
This is a good idea. You would need to include people in each zone that truly know the kids, not part timers like some zones have, to be sure it works. I think this would be a good approach to try.
The table below ilustrates for Youth the % selection by club and addresses the over/under-representation point you make. For this group, which seems to be the leading USA clubs the median % selection is about 57% (‘Greenwich’), which is higher than for the entire Youth group standing on 32%. ‘Green’ is above the median for this sample gorup and ‘Red’ below.
~60% is a very high selection % and it indicates that for this group of clubs the boys know where they stand. Outside this group, mostly non-CA teams ODP is mostly another opportunity to get high level competition and exposure. All those goals are great for the boys and the sport.
Got it. Thanks. I really agree with your point about kids at certain clubs having a good idea of where they stand.
I suspect that this data is skewed a little by the existence of the Blue teams. Some blue players are B team players and others were a little more mixed between actual prospects and long shots.
Youth Blue teams from PAC and SPA each sent 5 players to NTSC.
I don’t understand what this accomplishes. This method will only put players with teammates they don’t know for coaches who don’t know them. How would they develop a system of offense, 6-5, 5-6, defense, counter attack? How will you seed these teams? I can’t imagine the complaining that one team had an easier path because of the draw or how one kid was disadvantaged because his teammates were so much better than him that he wasn’t given the chance to shine. “If his teammates hadn’t been so fast, he wouldn’t have been the slowest player. Why was he put with such fast players. That’s not fair!”
The players are mixed at NTSC. No reason to rush that.
If anything, make a few teams from the Regional Championships to come to California. I don’t understand why that weekend exists if not for this reason. Is it the same teams with the same players? There are too many teams and too many players at this event. 715 rostered kids cut to 198. That will be cut roughly in half after NTSC.
Also, eliminate the medals and trophies and rename the event. As someone else said, these games are scrimmages. There are no scrimmage champions.
In the Regional Champ, each of the zone outside of CA brings 2 teams. For the National Camp, the coaches consolidate the two teams into 1, that is 50% cut. I doubt the teams outside of CA, and not sure for the ones in CA, practice “develop a system of offense, 6-5, 5-6, defense, counter attack?” together. If they are lucky they have 2/3 players from the same team that knwo each other.
This the cut on % selected that are returned ‘pipeline’ athletes. Overall, 65% of the athletes are not new to the pipeline NTSC/Academy and 35% were freshly ‘selected,’ i.e., does not look like completely a pre-determined selection.
That’s a great analysis. Thanks. Maybe my 10-15 was light but I don’t know if you’ve included anyone new to academy this year who didn’t make NTSC last year. Could be a small number. This year might be different for the many missing 2007 kids who were on the national team last year and are eligible this year but didn’t come.
The PAC number is surprising. I wonder how many of these new players are goalies. They seem to be cut at the highest rate at NTSC.
Thanks for the clarification on the regionals.
I think you’ll find that the kids on the teams do know each other and their strengths and so do the coaches. Simply playing against each other over the years breeds familiarity. Many have played on different teams together before HS sent them in different directions. That SPA red team had a lot of team chemistry. PSW had a lot of Del Mar. Coastal had 4-5 CIU kids. PAC had a bunch of CCU. The smaller zones have many kids who are on the same club as mentioned before.
ODP Nationals is already consisting of teams of players that don’t play together so @WPpops idea is not that far fetched and would balance everything out.
ODP can’t be all thing to all people and I disagree with you. Many have played together and against each other and the coaches do know them. The regionals is evidence of that. The idea of mixing them up seems borne solely from a hope that weaker players can play on a winning team.
Illiesm, really?
I think it depends on which zone we are talking about. Yes they play against each other, as do players outside of the zone so that is not zone specific. With each other? Maybe some and in a particular zone, but taking a national point of view I do not believe so.
I am not sure what you mean by llliesm so can’t speak to that.
I still go back to USAWP seeking feedback to see if there is an opportunity to be better, whatever that looks like.
Regarding feedback, I believe WPEX has the potential to make a greater impact on the sport than it currently does. Jeff and his team have created an online community that connects what seem to be the most passionate and possibly the most informed independent observers and participants in the sport.
I know a handful of USAWP board members and have suggested that they follow the site, even pointing them to specific topics I thought would be beneficial. That said, I’m not sure whether USAWP follows the site as closely as they should.
In theory, WPEX could facilitate surveys, collect feedback, provide education, and share insights with both the community and USAWP. This would be a way of “giving back” to the sport and supporting USAWP with the help of a dedicated group of volunteers. It also wouldn’t be overly time-consuming. For instance, the entire ODP discussion could be processed through ChatGPT to generate an “ODP wiki page,” and so on.
WPEX might require some editorial oversight, but given the number of active participants on the forum, managing it shouldn’t be too demanding.
Below are the final ODP Boys placings over the past three years with indicators showing the zone’s recent improvement.
A longer-term perspective (roughly a decade) and an attempt to ‘smooth the data’ using the available data on the USA WP site.
Observations:
I assume this trend mirrors JO results.
PSW Youth has traditionally not retained all of the top athletes through the final years of ODP, unfortunately. Many quit after the Cadet level if they don’t make NTSC or Academy, and zone performance is directly related to participation. It’s unfortunate because there are a lot of strong youth athletes in the zone.
I think you will see an improvement in PSW Youth performance over the next couple of years because of the number of Academy and NT kids at the current Cadet level.
Rod Bowen does an excellent job as the zone head coach, getting the best performance he can out of the participants every year.
Jack Davis (Del Mar/Cathedral Catholic/2028) on PSW Red made a lot happen for them on both sides of the pool. He was a major catalyst in their winning ways.
