I tried to go back in time and look at the rosters of: Cal, UCLA, and USC and count the total number of players and number of foreign players. I tried to leverage ChatGPT (…paid version) to do this and teach the algorithm. Frustrating, many errors and not learning from its mistakes…human race still has some use…for now. There are likely many erros, but historically it does not look that cutting the rosters to 24 or the sense that the number of foreign players has increase over the years are a big deal. I might be missing something, though.
Maybe @Marco can do a better job.
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We can argue about semantics and whether my view is jaded or just plain resignation.
I actually agree with much of what you say, especially with respect to why kids should play sports.
My concern, though, is really for the health of the sport that I love and that my kids (who, thanks to water polo, played D1 athletics and graduated from amazing schools) love. There is pressure on coaches to field the best team and win with any player available to them. But, I think that is short sighted … with roster limits, the rise of girls flag football, budget cuts for non revenue sports, etc etc , all it’s going to take is 2 or 3 schools to cut water polo and there may be a domino effect.
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added also Stanford and Princeton to the table. First column = total players and second column = foreign players. It seems the biggest ‘offender’ is Princeton likely taking advantage of ‘test optional’ to bring in foreing players. That play is close to be over as USA colleges taking the ‘optionality’ of SAT off the table. Harvard and Brown are not test optional as of next year, Stanford 2026, and Princeton I believe 2027. Princeton is likely trying to bring as many foreign players as they can this year before optionality expires (my guess…).
Calling OpenAI to ask for my money back 
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That is one small segment of the total college waterpolo universe. Some new colleges added recently as well. If the focus is the top 5 then your numbers are likely accurate.
What new colleges added D1 water polo? It will take a bit but we will get the data for the top 20 and share it with the community.
I would note Fordham also had four players from Greenwich water polo on its roster. So they are effectively getting a good percentage of Division I caliber players that are produced in their own backyard (which is an important note as local kids are being given the opportunity to play at a high DI level).
Based on its New York location (in the heart of Little Italy/Arthur Avenue) and a founding mission being to educate immigrant Catholics, it makes sense that the Rams would have a significant international (especially Italian) presence on the team.
Neat analysis. These numbers likely don’t include the redshirts. Redshirting made it possible to be on an even playing field with older European recruits. The 24 person limit should not include redshirts.
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We are loving this discussion as there a ton of great points being called out here. A couple of things to think about
- These terms were agreed upon by the students themselves as part of the settlement. Like it or not, the students are the ones driving this bus much to the detriment of their peers in smaller sports
- Playing water polo, regardless of the school or level, is considered a pathway to college and part of, but not entirely, the decision made by the parents to put their kids in water polo over other sports but it stops there for 99.8% of all hs water polo athletes per a 2016 report. I imagine this number will continue to shrink due to the influx of foreign talent. The bigger worry should be the overall participation numbers ie numbers of players playing in high school now vs 10 years ago OR percentage of total hs athletes playing water polo now vs 10 years ago.
- Until we have a true professional league, which won’t look anything like what’s done post college today, the sport will continue to shrink as money is the primary driver for all things athletics related. By providing income earning opportunities for post college or even in college athletes, the sport becomes more “competitive” in the eyes of the majority of parents and athletes and gives them another factor to consider when deciding which sports to pursue.
Great work on the roster breakdowns!
I have been wondering if the overall percentages of international players has increased materially not just this century but from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Anecdotally, when I played at Cal in the late 80s, we had guys from Puerto Rico, England and Germany, among other countries. And I recall UCLA had guys from Brazil (the Carsalade brothers) and Italy and USC’s roster seemed littered with Europeans. Stanford was almost universally domestic.
I only ask not to stake a position in the debate but rather to identify whether or not there has been a quantifiable change in roster percentage of international players. Inasmuch as it is possible, it might be worthwhile digging up all the old programs to try to determine as much.
Of course, I doubt it would settle the debate on anything regardless of what the findings turn out to be.
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I understand it when Long Beach State or Fordham goes foreign
- That top domestic kid is holding out to see if Cal or a big-4 will give them an offer
- LBS/Fdm can’t wait forever, and need talent so they look abroad
But why Cal? in 2024, Cal had a roster of 32 with 7 foreigners (all field players) - it’s hard to quantify who plays meaningful minutes, for instance: are goals scored against UC Merced really indicitive of who plays? - without going crazy with stats, what if we just simply note who the top-10 goal scorers on the year are. I see 4 are foreign. So roughly at Cal foreigners make up 22% of the roster but carry 40% of the offense.
At USC, it’s 4/26 (all field) and all 4 are in the top 10 for goals = 15% & 40%
Stanford is 5/25 (all field) and 2/10 so 20% and 20%
UCLA is 3/28 (all field) and 1/10 so 11% & 10%
The big-4 has the pick of the litter on our National team kids - so why do Cal and USC so disproportionately lean on foreign talent?
I’m REALLY glad you asked this question. There are a few reasons why:
- Many international “freshman” are older than our domestic freshman which yields are more physically mature individuals which really matters.
- Many internationals play in champions league or euro cup with their clubs prior to coming to USA - this experience is invaluable to a 16-18 y/o and it’s something our country simply does not offer without a professional league.
A personal example: I, Wes, went abroad to Hungary at the age of 16 years old by myself and stayed with a host family for 6 months and played water polo 2x/day and went to school. When I left for Hungary I was on the novice water polo team at my high school, below frosh/soph, and by the time I came back I was a starter on varsity and was being recruited by 3 of the big 4 and every east coast powerhouse. Mind you I was not a physically dominating or imposing player.
I learned 3 main things
- How to play and deal with physicality in a tempered manner
- My shooting and passing drastically improved and my vision was at an entirely different level
- My general understanding of the game was way more advanced than my peers and I could see the game in a much more advanced way to be able to anticipate. This led to my defense being very very good.
The lack of opportunity to play at an elite level for our youth today, the reason we at laac started our youth program to give players the chance to play up, has really hurt the development of our athletes which is the cause for international recruits taking their spots. The level of reps matters, IMHO.
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Technically, Puerto Ricans are domestic…(Pompi, no? hell of a player)
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Good point! Yes, both Pompi and older brother, Luis, were fantastic players from overseas 
Thanks, it’s just frustrating when places like Cal turn foreign - they have a thousand advantages over places like UC Davis and San Jose State, but even those advantages aren’t enough in the domestic recruiting race apparently.
So won’t roster limits force our top domestic kids who aren’t immediately ready but want to continue to play to look elsewhere than the Big-4, thus spreading out the talent? Roster limits are often discussed as a negative but I see them as a net good.
I think Cal will benefit somewhat from the roster limits. Kirk hasn’t really hit on many socal recruits in n recent years. I’d expect them to siphon off some players that might normally go to UCLA
And the portal is going to add a new dimension for sure.
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I did a scrape of rosters for the Big Four. Here is how the share of international players charts out over the years available:
edit: Sorry guys, I goofed on Cal. The error has been fixed and the revision has pushed the line up significantly. Of the Big Four, Cal appears to be the worst offender.
edit again: Cal is not posting accurate roster data for years 2009 through 2014. I found a copy of the 2012 Cal roster, so that is now accurate. For 2013 a roster was reconstructed from statistics tables, but for a player to appear they had to score, draw a foul, or do something stat-worthy.
The dataset not only has international and domestic, but I’ve also broken out California US and non-California US.
If there were a way to post the file, I’d be happy to do so, and if there is anything you’d like to see charted, let me know.
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This is really interesting. I realize we are hyper focused on international players on college (Big 4) rosters. Clearly there is an uptick though not as much as one would expect. There is no question with the roster limits these % will go up 50%-100%.
The bigger impact foreign players have had is at JO’s. The number of foreign players at JO’s has skyrocketed over the last 4-5 years. To the point where USAWP had to put a limit of 2 per team which is something, but it just spreads the players out over more teams. The more foreign players play at JO’s and also now Quicksilver the more looks they get from college coaches.
USC had 26 players on the roster for 2024 Fall — they have 8 players listed as seniors or grad seniors.
With these kinds of numbers that leaves 6 spots for this class of 2025 recruits to meet the roster limit of 24. They have 4 players in their announced recruiting class which leaves 2 open spots for Luke Harris, Breydon Congo, Reed Hanna, and Colt Bradley who have all committed there.
Here is where things get crazy for the class of 2026 — let’s say they stick with 24 players and have 2 of the recruits sit out a year (don’t start college until the spring of 2026 is what I’m hearing they will do). They have 6 juniors currently and Vukazic who only have one year left. Now you are down to 5 spots for the class of 2026 to stay at 24 players. Notice the downward trend of space available. 1-2 transfers, 1-2 international, you are down to 1-2 American recruits headed to SC.
I suppose you could continue to tell players to start college the spring after the season, but man at some point you are asking a lot of players when there are other options to have fun and play.
Spots are dwindling fast, good luck to HS seniors getting one at a Big 4, it’s gonna be less than 10 players total HS Americans going Big 4 here soon.
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