it's our last water polo season (probably) and gearing up for summer tournaments there is drama as there usually is. Since there aren't enough girls at any one club, clubs will join forces to create more competitive teams. Anyway my daughter's club and another club were merging and planned to have an A team and a B team. At least that's what one of the coaches thought. There were 3 or 4 combined tournaments with one team and eventually the other coach (who was going to lead the A team in summer tourneys) thought it was going to be one big team with a huge bench while my daughter's coach thought there would be an A and a B team (so weaker players from both clubs could play a lot at an appropriate level).
The two team would have worked brilliantly EXCEPT the A team coach and/or his weaker players decided that his weaker players would not play on the B team, despite the fact that they clearly should based on ability. Which led to my daughter's coach pressuring my daughter (who was clearly an A-teamer) into playing with the B team to guarantee the weaker players of his club would have an opportunity to play on a more competitive team. Like, he tried to tell her she were depriving the weaker players of a chance to play at all and that the A-team coach didn't want her or have space for her when the A coach flat out told her he wanted her on the team and told them that they were depriving the weaker players of a chance to play. Really not cool.
anyway she is playing with the a-team in a couple of weeks and she will have a lot of fun (hopefully)
Besides watching maybe 5 minutes of Olympic coverage of Water polo I have no idea how it works. What makes someone good a water polo?
Is it similar to football where people with all different body sizes (Lineman/receivers/etc) play at the same time in different positions?
Is it more similar to basketball where being tall is a huge advantage?
Are you swimming/treading water the whole time or can you touch the bottom when the ball is on the other side of the pool?