The TXWaterpolo Podcast

UIL water polo will be here before we know it and both Joe and James are getting questions from athletes and families who want to know the process behind getting their schools to field teams. Joe get in the weeds of it so that parents and athletes can get that process under way for 2022 or 2023. Plus, Austin Ringheim is MIT's head coach, has strong connections with Texas, and has just complete...

Mark Lawrence took his 'Roos men's team to Stanford and came home with two big wins over their rivals from Pennsylvania, and a respectable outcome versus powerhouse Stanford. Their (most successful?) season is over but the women's season quickly approaches and there's much to be done to maintain the standard that Lawrence has set with his program. Meanwhile the year of 2021 ends wi...

We took a week off while Joe was partying with McCoy in Iowa so we take time to recap the recently-completed Texas Challenge Cup and Pegasus masters tournaments. Plus, a listener asks us to explain the ODP evaluation, training, and selection process (we try). We also talk about UT's ninth place finish at CWPA Collegiate Club Championships, Austin College's trip to beautiful and expensive P...

Chris Cullen is nearly half way through (!) his first season as the director of YOUR Southwest Zone ODP team. He talks about where we stand with the most recent changes in the program as this season's rosters are announced soon (maybe already). Plus, James and Joe are both headed to Justin to coach at Thunder's Texas Challenge Cup. Who between them will be the loudest? And they touch on ho...

Two convincing wins and a tough loss to the eventual tourney winner mean a positive outcome for 'Roos head coach Mark Lawrence. Austin College finished third out of seven teams at last weekend's CWPA Division III Eastern Championships beating Washington & Jefferson and Penn State Behrend while losing to Johns Hopkins. The coach talks with us about those results, the upcoming MPSF Champ...

North Texas was well represented and fared even better at the recently completed Cousineau Cup in SoCal and Rocktober in Arizona. Plus, Austin College returned from Colorado with three losses to some serious competitors, the UIL makes things official, and more about Joe's and James's former coaches jumping in fully clothed and making the mistake of trying dip. Oh yeah, McCoy is a month old...

The title says is all. McCoy Patrick Linehan (insert Pogues here) has joined us for our first post-partum podcast (listen for faint sounds of dissatisfaction from the lad as Joe pontificates). Joe and Steph welcomed the boy a few weeks early but everyone is home now, only slightly sleep-deprived and grateful for all the support from the Texas water polo community. Oh, and we chat about some water...

UPDATED with the correct audio file. *** Our nominee for America's most interesting varsity water polo coach, Cody Pletcher of Alvin was named Interim Head Coach at Cal Lutheran in June. The three-time world rodeo champion has one of the most unique backgrounds in all of water polo and will attempt to garner the Kingsmen's first ever SCIAC title this fall. On the other side of the country...

Austin College returned from a two-day, five-game spin in New England where they won one and fell four times in some highly competitive matchups as the 2021 men's intercollegiate season returns with some normalcy. We talk with Head Coach Mark Lawrence about the trip and how this season is just different from the ones prior. And the summer is over, no matter what your thermometer says. The Welc...

We return to the fray after four weeks of such things as helping to manage more than 1000 youth water polo matches, coaching (extremely loosely defined) a group of 10-year-olds to complete victory, staying up late to watch Americans pursue Olympic water polo glory, traveling to the beach, visiting charming old college campuses, and other various semi-waterpolo related things. The summer is nearly...

Sixteen athletes were selected to participate at USA Water Polo's National Team Selection Camp and five of them were selected to national team rosters, huge news for Texas water polo. Speaking of which, did you know Junior Olympics session 3 will take place in North Texas in a couple weeks? Did you want to know the schedule? Well.... it's not done yet. But it's coming soon - promise. W...

More teams from Texas than ever competed at the Southwest Zone Junior Olympics Qualifying tournament a couple weekends ago, and all of them having qualified, they will now be playing at National Junior Olympics in North Texas at the end of July. James and Joe talk about this huge bit of success for Texas clubs and the forthcoming big tournament. Those Olympics overlap with the other, bigger Olympi...

In between minor bouts of tornado warnings, power outages, and torrential Texas rain the Olympic Development Program season essentially ended in San Antonio last weekend with over 500 athletes from as far as Florida and Hawai'i playing dozens of matches over three days. We recap those events and talk with USA Water Polo High Performance Director John Abdou about professionalizing the sport, mo...

St. Mark's lived up to its TXWaterpolo top ranking and defeated a very game Dawson High School to win its 9th boys' state title in Cy-Fair last Saturday. We talk with a soaked Trent Calder, first-year head coach of the Lions, about his comeback win. And the summer schedule doesn't resemble anything like what we saw in 2020 for understandable reasons. We talk about the packed schedule,...

A jam packed show where we recap an exciting girls high school championship tournament where Flower Mound came away with the trophy with their win over Southlake Carroll. But perhaps the biggest news of the week: Junior Olympics are coming to Texas. We talk about that in detail and look forward to what the summer will look like for clubs from Texas and throughout the non-California USA. And interv...

That's right, the high school season is just about over. Regional championships have been decided, the state tournaments are seeded and scheduled, and Genai Kerr is coming to Texas! We cover the big beats of last weekend's competition, highlight our players of the week, and give the "final" TXWP Coaches' Rankings. And Allie Hill, who played water polo "a long time ago,"...

The second TAGS tournament of the past 12 months went off without much of a hitch in Pearland last weekend with Pegasus taking home the hardware for all four competition groups. We speak with Head Coach Spencer Dornin about the rapid rise of his club, expectations for its future, and his role in high school water polo in Dallas. Speaking of which, the prep season is ending with two regions already...

Not bad for a team that began varsity play in 2019. Texas' only NCAA women's varsity team now owns the distinction of being only the 5th ever program to win a CWPA Division III Championship. We talk with Mark Lawrence about the season and what comes next for the 'Roos at the end of this pandemic-altered season. Plus, high school championships are just around the corner. We share this w...

If there's a water polo job in Texas that Chris Cullen does not have we'd like to know about it. Today he talks with Joe about becoming the NISCA Regional Chairperson, a position connected with selecting All-American prep water polo players from Texas and beyond each year. We also announce our high school players of the week and cover our most recent rankings, plus some chatter about Austi...

Austin College went to Pennsylvania and returned undefeated after four entertaining matches, including wins over Division II Gannon and Mercyhurst. We talk with two of their award-winning athletes Lexi Wong and Sophie Oliver. Jeff Chandler is a two-time state high school championship winner at Cy-Creek and is in the thick of the prep season in Houston. We talk with him about the challenges present...

We're very late. We know. But better late than... whatever. This week we recap some of the top high school events and select our first players of the week! Plus, a conversation with Kaitlin Kelley of St. Agnes Academy about the 2021 season and more. Look for a new pod soon, and keep submitting player of the week nominations .

The Cal Baptist men finished this bizarre season with an upset win over Air Force to earn their first ever Western Water Polo Association Championship and are now headed to Los Angeles for NCAA Championships , the program's first. There they'll face perennial top-four UCLA and look to stage a huge upset in that opening round. Today we talk with three Lancers from Texas – Zach Lowery, Camer...

Joe and Steph are having a baby. There, we said it right up front. We gush about the huge news for a good chunk of time before moving on to the end of the Austin College men's season and the start of Texas' high school one. Then, why speculate about what has been happening up in Sherman what with Covid, impassible ice, a drained pool, and a comically abbreviated season? We talk with the ma...

James lost the last segment that he recorded with Joe. Let's get that out of the way. #SubParPodcast But oh boy, did they make up for it with a scintillating conversation about the Austin College men, who were forced to cancel two trips and several games due to Snowmageddon-2021. So they have already arrived at the final competition of the season, the MPSF Championships in Los Angeles, where t...

We're back after an extraordinary week, one in which multiple water polo events were cancelled, including our show, which succumbed to multiple and unpredictable power outages. We talk about the week that was, chopping wood, wearing winter clothing indoors, boiling water (oh yeah, we didn't actually talk about that sad fact), and a glancing reference to the Olympics where the US women shou...