I think it would be sweet if NCAA water polo moved to a Draft… then had a trade period.
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Honestly, we need a more active transfer portal - kids need to prioritize playing instead of the perceived school rank for anything to change.
A bench rider at the top 5 will just quit the sport and graduate instead of transferring to be a starter at a UC Davis or SJSU type school… but the best players at LB State or UC Irvine will transfer to UCLA or Cal if given the chance. So it’s kind of a one-way street right now.
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Yeah I see both freshmen centers from Long Beach moving on next year. Somehow Long Beach does a good job finding these kids but cant hold them.
Absolutely agree to that as well. The development on girls/womens side as a whole has been underwhelming and overly political. The results of the last Olympics and the emergence of internationals at all age group levels shows it.
These college coaches need to win, they need strong players and they found them!
It’s more the fault of USA water polo on a developmental level that college coaches must seek quality women outside the US.
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Great analysis
However - we’ve all seen the sub 7 players who wound up at big 4 in the last few years. Every big 4 has taken a few. They are either packaged deals (same club sends a 9+ and a 6 to the same college), donors, or coach favors.
But outsider parents don’t realize this, and think their kid has a shot next year because [program X] took a player this year worse than our kid.
Until parents realize how non-meritocratic the process is at the edges, they are in for massive disappointment.
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I think parents see this starting in age group and odp/high school on the girls side. Boys seems to be ok, if you’re good, you’ll play.
Yes, there have definitely been some head scratchers this year and the last few for that matter at the big 4. I have to assume that most of these have benefited from connections to alumni, donors or the coaches. Once the season starts, it is pretty obvious where the talent level falls off on roster depty charts. Going forward, with the 24 player roster, I imagine that these spots will start to disappear.
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I agree that USAWP is part of the problem; they position themselves to sell “access” to the Big 4 schools via youth team trainings, scrimmages, and games at the Big-4 schools while snubbing the rest of the colleges.
There’s a reason USAWP always host games at Cal and Stanford and not Santa Clara and San Jose State.
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From CaliWaterPolo1:
Addison Parrish, Dos Pueblos and SB805 to Stanford. Following the footsteps of both of her brothers (Blake Parrish and Ethan Parrish) and in my opinion is an extremely underrated center defender
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LMU has two girls from Chicagoland area who have committed to their 2025 class.
Ruby Meier (Waubonsie Valley HS)
Payton Schrier (Naperville North HS)
Villanova signed Rosie Woodman (New Trier HS, IL)
Princeton signed Vivian Golub (Sacred Heart), Didi Evans (Corona del Mar), Sophie Bollyky Purcell (Asphalt Green Club)
Harvard has a Hungairan player named Petra Klemm who has committed to them. She played for Foothill Club summer of 2022
Then they need to limit roster sizes (say, 16 and 4 red shirts). The Internationals are the only way the East Coast teams are competitive. Unless you’re going to limit spots so that the yearly talent is more disbursed, you’re going to kill water polo outside of California with your proposal.
Concordia University Irvine
Myley Mendiburu - Garces Memorial High School
Abbey Foley - Canyon High School
Sydney Neilon - Dawson High School
Claire Gluzman - Archbishop Mitty High School
Amber Lewis - Reddam House - South Africa
Madison Emmerson - Edison High School
Azusa Pacific University
Kori Cunningham - Citrus College
Nala Lottermoser - El Capitan High School (Lakeside)
UC Merced
Makayla Hemphill - El Capitan High School (Merced)
Makenzie Royal - Santana High School
Annellise Tamez - Sanger High School
Abigail Conner - Eastlake High School
La Salle University
Piper Brostrom - St. Francis High School (Sacramento)
Arizona State University
Lulu Gaetano - El Toro High School
UC Davis
Audrey Quilala - Granite Bay High School
Pacific
Giselle Orson - Redwood High School (Larkspur)
Bucknell
Brooke Temkin - San Ramon Valley High School
Hey all, please see pinned topic in the High School - Girls category.
I’ve consolidated the data into the linked spreadsheet and have granted a few folks editing access to keep it up to date.
This will hopefully make @GirlDad 's life a little easier to keep the top message updated and visible to folks who want to see the latest news. 
I’d recommend here we post updates with a format that’s conducive to being imported as a comma separated value file.
Example:
school, name, hs, club
CBU, Kendall Donahue, El Segundo HS, SoCalWP
Villanova, Reia Kimi, Punahou HS, SET
This will make it a simply copy-paste job into the spreadsheet.
–
If this becomes annoying for us to maintain, we’ll go back to keeping this data in a thread OR see if there’s a better workflow for us.
If this works really well, I’ll apply this pattern to the HS Boy’s recruits as well!
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns
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Thanks Clark! It will be nice to have a single source of truth. Since we are tracking affiliated clubs in the sheet, let’s add that to the format as well:
College, First + Last Name, HS, Club
(Updated the example, please feel free to flame me with corrected clubs for our reference players)
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LMU Gabby MacAfee - CDMHS
SDSU Mackenzie Dollander - CDMHS
LIU Olivia Bright, Bullard HS, Praetorian
Santa Clara, Hailey Romano, Cathedral Catholic, San Diego Shores
Indiana, Audrina Kang, Miramonte, Lamo
CSU Monterey, Isabel Headley, Fremont High School ( Sunnyvale), San Jose Express
La Salle, Summer Mo, Leigh High School, San Jose Express
Concordia University Irvine, Claire Gluzman, Archbishop Mitty High School, Pacific Valley Premier