Isn’t Tony a 4 time winner?
Comp at the same age.
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“I’ll do my best to collect relevant accolades leading up to their junior year:”
Tony won the Peter J. Cutino Award (recognized as the collegiate water polo player of the year) 4 times.
He achieved this national honor in all four years of his career at Stanford University from 2001 through 2004.r
hahaha…I need to RTFA. Or in this case, read the whole post.
Tony won a silver at the 2008 Olympics. Would you say Ryder was the best player on the 2024 team? I’d say he was not. He has a long way to go and we can only hope he plays as long as Tony did. Let’s have the conversation in 10-15 years. It would be insulting to all the greats we have had to even put him at number 2 right now.
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I said up until their junior year of college. Tony was 27 in 2008.
I also mentioned at the end of my post that Ryder was not named to the All-Star team at 2024, that being in favor of Tony.
I think it’s just exciting that there’s another player that’s made such an impact that he’d even be in the conversation with Tony. Is Ryder better? I don’t think so, but I can appreciate the hot take.
Does this need a new thread vs the WPW thread?
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Yeah I keep seeing new posts and hope it is a new video, only to be disappointed and ignore what the argument is.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: Compliance Questions
Week 1 Is in the books and we’ve got our first recap and analysis of the season. Here ya go:
Week 1 Recap
Mercury Awards Voting
Mercury Awards and Victory Ball Tickets
Mercury Awards Voting Total as of Aug 31
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Don’t miss this episode….surprise to WPEX fans in the beginning of the episode.
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Amazing interview with Coach Mercado. We talk about the building of the new pool, the cat walks, the impact of assistant coaches and him coaching USA at University Games next summer! Its an awesome interview!
Coach Mercado Interview!
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Great interview with Felix! Appreciate his perspective and sense of urgency for the sport. It should also be mentioned that one of the (perhaps few!) benefits of being a smaller sport is the ability to access the coaches and players in this way. if you’re a fan, recruit or parent, these WPW interviews provide a real insiders view that in other sports would be difficult to get!
It’s also quite refreshing to see such positivity and gratitude in a setting like this interview! No whining, complaining or grumpiness that we see way too often as sports fans.
Keep up the good work fellas!
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I think Clay will like this one.
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I have to say it is a little strange that several of the top vote getters have not played a single game yet. Hopefully there is a large enough voting population to upvote players who are active in the coming weeks. https://www.laacwaterpolo.com/mercuryawards
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NEW SIGNING ALERT!!!
Enjoy this episode of Water Polo Wednesday!!!
Some of my thoughts. I know sometimes my comments about the show can be negative, but I do think the quality of the show has vastly improved. I enjoyed Clay giving his alma mater some criticism last week, and you guys have done a better job this season. I thought your top 10 was very solid. I also enjoyed the Q&A segment at the end.
I will go back to the point I made earlier in this thread. I can respect trying to grow the sport and adding more awards and giving athletes and teams more to play for, but I’ll bring up a few examples of why the voting opened too early. Fordham freshman goalie Alejandro Cheline (1C and has not started a game this season or played against a ranked opponent) has more votes for best goalie than Herzer, Kovacs, and Smirnov. Pina and Tauscher have yet to play a game this season and are two of the leading vote-getters. Diego Tresa has 31 votes for center and is leading the charge, but has been playing more as a utility and center defender. Aguirre has not played for St. Mary’s and is likely to miss the season, yet is still available to be voted for. Of course, Perrone is an amazing player, but he’s yet to play this season. The idea is there, but the execution isn’t, and if you really are serious about growing the sport, we can attempt to do both. We both have the same goals for the sport.
Also, you make a point about the Pacific methodology with scheduling. I agree it’s easier to win the one-off games. That scheduling works if you’re going for the at-large bid and want to stack quality wins. But if you’re looking to set yourself up for success in the conference tournament — where Pacific has struggled in recent years — the MPSF Invite is where you do it. 3 quality games (not against D2 opponents) in 3 days is how you do it. Last year, Davis won 3 games in 3 days to make the NCAA tournament. If one day the NCAA tournament or the conference tournament switches formats and does not have 3 games in 3 days, you will have a completely valid point. While I do agree that Graham gives his team the best chance for one-off upsets and a better chance for an at-large than any other non-Big Four team, for the realities of our sport, the other methodology is more advantageous to coaches and programs.
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Great episode Wes and Clay! I am hyped for this Cal/UOP game Friday.
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Here you go, Wes:
Fordham v Pepperdine
Friday, September 11th @ 6pm ET
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