Water Polo to Remain a Sanctioned High School Sport in Florida

High School - Boys
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Water polo remains a sanctioned sport after FHSAA removes item from agenda - Yahoo Sports

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Florida is often brought up in discussions about which state USA Water Polo should target next to expand the sport’s footprint. It is surprising that, despite its warm climate (perhaps too warm, requiring costly pool-cooling equipment), Florida has not developed into a high school aquatics powerhouse.

I looked at Swimcloud’s ranking of the top 50 high school swimming programs nationwide and aggregated results by state. Florida ranked near the bottom, with only one team represented, though notably, that team is the best in the country (Bolles). California leads with nine programs in the top 50. However, the real heartland of high school swimming lies in the Great Lakes states, which collectively have a population similar to California’s but boast 20 programs in the top 50; double California’s rate on a per-capita basis.

Texas, like Florida, has produced only a handful of top programs. This may indicate that club swimming is more popular than high school swimming in these regions.

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Does anyone know why FL water polo season is Spring? Hurricane season in Oct/Nov?

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Even in CA, is HS swimming really a thing? Swimmers train with their club teams even during HS season (CIF carve out). A good HS swim team just means the club swimmers converge on the same HS. I suspect if you run this on clubs you get a very different picture.

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It is a bit harder to aggregate by states at the club level as USA Swimming split the country by their own regions. I just looked at TX and FL, Texas has 5 clubs in top 50 and FL 3. Still about average and not more as a function of their population size.

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Florida’s issue is pools. It’s not like California where you have a regulation water polo pool on every campus.

It has always been a stronghold in South Florida and recently Orlando has done a great job of proliferating programs.

They need to get Tampa going for numbers. There is now a youth club there but no high schools outside of Venice, who has to travel everywhere.