I had some feedback for USA WP regarding the Austin Water Polo thread. @CounterAttack posted a relevant post on their Instagram campaign featuring Austin, Tony Azevedo, and Maggie Steffens, garnering 40K views. This initiative is commendable and could be beneficial.
While I appreciate Tony, Maggie, and their contributions to the sport and their support for Austin WP, I’m curious to know if GenZ genuinely cares about these two individuals or if the current format resonates with them.
To achieve a broad reach and engage GenZ, USA WP should collaborate with young content creators. They can create compelling content that aligns with GenZ’s interests and follows their preferred platforms.
I’m not sure who created the Instagram account WaterPoloPlug, but they’re doing an excellent job. Many of their content pieces have garnered over 100K views.
I also doubt that GenZ is interested in WaterPoloExchange. When I tried to introduce it to my son, he dismissed it as a platform for older people, which is accurate. It’s a message for all of us: to make the sport relevant, we must engage the younger generation. They’re the ones who know what interests them, and they’re the ones who will create and consume the content related to water polo.
To your point, on the women pro side Tilly Kearns and Bea Ortiz have great accounts on Instagram.
What I see right now is that unless it’s TikTok or Insta (and a few other similar ones in Europe), the GenZ group seldom engages on other platforms. So doing more things with players makes a lot of sense though it’s still very much an echo chamber given how small the community is.
Now, having said that I don’t think it would help USAWP in scenarios like Austin: How many parents, who can actually contribute and move the needle in Austin, have any idea who Tony and Maggie are, let alone follow them on these networks? Very few. I follow both of them and they did not show up on my feed. I’m not convinced that USAWP knows how to reach the parents other than reminding us for dues and/or buying spectators’ tickets.
If USAWP’s goal is to grow the sport nationally, it’s fair to ask whether the organization should use its platform to support and advocate for major water polo communities outside California when they face challenges. I don’t know Texas well, but i would think Austin would be an important area to keep high school water polo. someone said they need $90k on the other thread…