Salty Splash - Robbie Bova.mp3

Salty Splash - Robbie Bova.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Salty Splash - Robbie Bova.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

This is the Salty Splash podcast. Welcome to the salty splash water polo pod, the salty splash. We'll take a look at waterpolo growth from the perspective of water polo, athletes, clubs, parents, referees and coaches exploring issues facing the growth of our sport. We love at a local level, and we'll seek to have interesting and collaborative conversations with stakeholders to the game. My name is Shawn Stringham and I look forward to creating conversation honoring the history of waterpolo or more importantly, talking about the future of our sport. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I'm the men's head coach and club director of Olympus Waterpolo. I serve on the Utah Water Polo and USA water polo mountain zone boards. I will come at this podcast from a perspective of someone who has lived outside of California, always looking for best practices to grow the sport at every level, splash ball, age group, club, high school and beyond. In this episode, Robbie Bova and I discuss her pathway into the sport of waterpolo, which includes being the MVP of the only women's team outside of California to win a college national championship. The importance of focusing on every athlete.

Some incredible insight on how do you splash ball as the foundation for your team to grow your club, and some long term perspective on how teams in the mountain zone continue to create vision for the game. And of course, Robbie adds the Salty Splash playlist with a theme that applies to all of us. All in all, some great ideas on how to introduce more kids to the game and create quality, competition and development opportunities for the sport at your club in the mountain zone and ultimately across the country. Please subscribe. Great. Give a five star review and share the podcast. Find us on Twitter and Instagram and check us out on our Web site, all by searching Salties, Flash Pop in our show. Notes is a link if you want to send me a voice message. If you have a question or a comment, don't hesitate to send a message. And hopefully we can incorporate it into the podcast or simply just email me at Salty's Splash Pod at Gmail dot com. I look forward to bringing you regular episodes. Let's work together to bring the sport we love to every pool. All right.

We'd like to welcome everyone to this episode of the Selfie Splash podcast. Today we have Robbie Bova, who is in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Robbie is a very experienced coach and athlete and has some fantastic insight onto the sport. As I've visualized this podcast and thought about it, I knew as I finally decided that I wanted to do this. Robbie had to be one of my first guests because she's just fascinating to talk to.

Well, let me give you a little background about Robbie, Robbie is currently the director and head coach of Albuquerque Waterpolo. As I mentioned, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she is also currently the women's youth ODP coach in the mountain zone and she is also the director of the new the New Mexico High School Water Polo League. And that's something that she's built. One thing to listen and learn from Robbie, is that she loves to build three things. And those three things are she loves to build the sport of waterpolo. She loves to build leagues. And I think most importantly, and I think she'll agree that her most important thing is that she loves to build athlete from a human perspective, not necessarily even from a great water polo player perspective. So, Robbie, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it is pretty fun. I'm super excited, like I said, to have a conversation.

But the first question that I've been asking people is, how did you get involved in water polo? I think if we can master that, because we all had that one moment of like, oh, yeah, this is the coolest sport of all time. And if we can get those athletes an opportunity to have that moment, that's, I think, one of the key things that how we build the sport. So how'd you get involved in water polo? Tell me your story.

Well, I joined the swim team out here in New Mexico called Duke City Aquatics back in the day. Coached by Reid Barnet's. And once we got to a certain level of swimming, we were able to start participating in water polo. So what he would do is he did water polo between the short course and long course seasons. So it wasn't year round or anything. It was just in the off seasons. But then during the summer, we would go to Gio's. So I was about 12 when I could swim well enough to be allowed to play water polo.

So from that perspective, did you have to, like, get to a certain competency of swimming before you were allowed, before you were like, allow dessert?

You had to basically get up into the senior program. So you were swimming to a certain level. They didn't have the younger kids playing or anything like that. It was pretty much twelve and older and it was the higher level twelve year olds that would play. We did didn't take us back back in the day. Gio's was 13 and under and said twelve and 14 and 13 and was the youngest age group. And I remember going to James in Florida on the 13 and under team. I don't remember much about it except for the cool hotel rooms.

Right. Just did. The best thing about water is actually just the travel and just being in the hotel room away from your parents.

And my very first experience and my I think my second game, my very first goal ever in a big tournament was against my own goalie.

So there's that. You know, you don't we don't need to. You don't need to share that. Laughs. But, you know.

Interesting. So where did you go from there? I mean, kind of tilt. Did you you played in high school. You played club. I know you had a fantastic college experience.

I did. So I was really blessed. A couple of years just playing. And then our coach out here was involved with that back in the day when he would try out for the junior team and the senior team youth. It wasn't around until I was in college, the youth national team. And so they would have regional tryouts, but it was only four regions back then. On the women's side. So we would he would have some tryouts here. They'd send three or four kids. We'd go to Colorado Springs back in the day. Colorado Springs was at the Olympic Training Center, was a major hub for the national team, training for the women's team, being out and about the men's.

I was 15 and I the truth is, is I wasn't really that smart.

I had an arm and nobody could stop my shot. Well, when I shot at the cage, I was like Charlie Sheen in that movie, you know, with a baseball movie where, you know, he'd take the head off of the guy or the right side. That was me, was shooting. I had a God given gift when it came to the physical side. But because I was out here in a kind of a lower level team. But we did have some really good athletes that I was coming up under. Heather Moody, who is the 2000 Olympics she graduated here, is a senior. She was two years ahead of me and graduated from Monsanto. And she was course on the national team, played, you know, and we ended up with a pocket of really decent female players that I was on the younger end. And so I think that had a lot to do with it. And then getting involved with the national team at a younger age, back then, it was like the junior team and the junior B team, which so I initially made the junior B team. And then after high school, after high school, I actually wasn't planning on going to going to college. But Doc, we had a training in Oregon for one of the national teams and a couple of the girls were slippery rock players. And everybody was asking everybody, you know, where are you going to college, blah, blah, blah. And I think it was the.

Junior, I think, might have still been the junior B team of the junior team, got to go to Australia and we went to Oregon. I missed the cut during that time when I was 17.

And no offense to the Oregon people out there. Is not Australia. It wasn't Australia.

I you know, I had decided not to go to college. And of course, now I was regretting the decision because it was like July. And so a month and a half later, I was at Slippery Rock because Doc Hinkler found out that there was a athlete on the national team that was not going to go. Yeah. So I found my way out there a month and a half later and played for him. And it was a fantastic experience. Course continued my way up on different levels. The national team getting to play with some really amazing ladies and. And then it's slippery rock just being a part of history. But we were at the tail end of it. There were a lot of really special women prior to me being. I just happened to be there when we won the national championships.

But now we're looking at just like you just dropped that. Right. I mean, you won a national championship at Slippery Rock, which is the only time that only college at the time and ever since. Outside of California to win a national championship in women's water polo.

Transitory. You brag on that a little bit. That's a pretty cool thing.

It was. It was a pretty amazing experience to be a part of. Yeah.

Why would you have a favorite memory from that?

Oh, gosh.

From the actual tournament or like harassing our coach or any of those. Yeah.

Our coach was so strong that when we won we pushed him in the pool and he gets out and he wasn't complaining at all. And we found out a couple weeks later that when we pushed him and he broke his hip and after that he drives all the way home. He doesn't tell anybody because it's just who he was. You know, he read all about the athlete. He was all about building us up.

He didn't put winning first. And I think that those were those were valuable lessons at the time. And as far as the game itself, you know, it's funny you remember certain details of certain games and you remember the euphoria of winning, especially the year before. We had had a heartbreaking loss. We were second in San Diego, scored a goal with like 15 seconds left. That put them up six, five and Syria. And we lost and we had lost one of our teammates that year and. So the team, like, just celebrating. Yeah. You know, because our work, we're so so I have a little intel inside story on this.

As you as you know, my colleague and the women's head coach at Olympus who works with me is Alexis. Yeah. Alexis, Kourtney and I something special with you and Alexis that you guys were roommates in college. And so I knew this was coming up and I sent her a text.

Alexis, you had to give me your thoughts on Robby. You've got to give me something that I can share. And so she said this in response, and I think you'll like it. She said Robbie had the strongest and fastest shot I've ever seen in my life so fast that she would frequently throw her arm out. I'd have to go get cortisone shots. She was also the MVP when we won the national championship and she was only a sophomore. Robbie was never rattled. She always rose to the occasion. And you always felt confident having her on your team. I think that's a pretty nice compliment. I mean, I don't think there's anything better about a teammate than that, right, in terms of having you as a teammate.

That's really kind of her. I'll have to thank her for saying such kind of things.

But tell me about the shoulder thing. She's mentioned that to me before. Like like literally she just throw the ball and it would pop out and she would swim over and pop back in and she'd go in.

Yeah. So I did. It's it's true. I think that later on in college I was able to get help. When I was younger, I didn't have a lot of technique taught to me. And so I just shot, you know, I didn't necessarily my as much it was all arm. And so kind of like, what do they call it, baseball shoulder or somebody that it's all the tendons started to stretch out with some blacks. Sometimes it was more painful than other times. And sadly there were a few times that, you know, I ended up having to sit for a little bit, but through my time, it's slippery rock. I was able to get it strengthened and and do a lot of work. But, yeah, it was there was it was that same summer because then we had Cuba for the Pan Am games and then we had the last of the Olympic festivals. And at the Olympic Festival it had its final hurrah. And then it took me about five to six months to rehab it. But luckily our season was in the spring, so I had plenty of time. And then judo really helped me strengthen the shoulder as well. And it's tough call.

Well, as I mentioned, kind of an intro. You love to build the sport.

You love to build league, you love to build athletes. I'm looking at your bio here page on the Albuquerque Waterpolo dot com Web site.

And you've got e it's long. It's good. I mean, there's lots of things that you've done to contribute to the sport. So much more talk.

Talk about talk about what you want in terms of the development of those three elements of what what how how do you guide yourself as an accomplished developer and creator of the sport?

You know, I think that my past playing doesn't necessarily have a whole lot to do with who I am as a coach. Maybe it does as far as my brain and my ability to do different tactics. But as far as working the athlete, I think you can be an average player, you could be a below average player, you could be a top notch player. Like I are a high level player like I was at one point. The thing is, the key is, is the athlete. So I think that a lot of coaches we coach first of all, we give ourself a little too much.

We give ourselves too many props when it comes to the high level athletes, that two percent that they have God given ability, that we just get to kind of help morph and guide them in the right direction. But they're off doing extra training. They're doing all sorts of things that we can't even keep up with. Right. It's just who they are. It's how they were hardwired. But if they're doing that and we're not working mental toughness and we're not working, we're not putting things into perspective, we're not giving them honest critique and feedback about how they act in a game. Are they being you know, they might be a top level player, but are they being selfish or are they? You know, but it's also the verbiage, you know, like the one of the things I really hate hearing coaches say is that don't be a ball hog. You know, I mean, I just you have to use kind of a reverse psychology and tell them what to do instead of what not to do. You also have to build the team out of the pool. So like doing mental toughness workshops, team retreats, team hikes, we do mental toughness workshops outside of the pool once a season. But then once a month we do a mental toughness in practice time. So they so we'll take one of the groups for an hour and we go to the classroom and we're working on IPEX Ideal Performance State or whatever. We're following different books. We talk about that feeling where you could practice really well. And when you start to really get into the kid's heads and you have them, you.

Talk to them, you find out some kids, it's a parent, maybe that's too hard on them, some kids, it's an experience that blocks them. That's from another sport that doesn't even have anything to do with your sport. Friends are afraid of failure. The kids have a lot of fear of failure. These days, I'm not sure if it was like that before and I just didn't pay as close of attention. But if we can get past these markers, these emotional and mental markers, it really helps us coach the whole athlete. And you can see you'll see average athletes become outstanding athletes and teammates, because the reality is, is the number of kids that leave my program, I go play collegiately at a high level D1 national team stuff or whatever is a very small percentage. So what's happening with the rest of the athletes? If the 98 percent that's being left behind because we're not focusing on the whole athlete. You know, the reality is, is we want these kids to go out and become good, decent human being for the rest of society, regardless of their total journey and waterpolo. Right now, we have access to them through sport, which is a Triplette, you know, privilege as a coach. Yeah, for sure.

And I think that's, you know, that is so important. It's been interesting.

You know, we're recording this during Cauvin time, but we went through our high school seniors and they graduated and was like it was disappointing to not have the season, but it was great. It was great to recognize. And all of the athletes recognize, you know what? Sometimes it's not about the waterpolo. You know, it's about the lessons that we learn through waterpolo, through the sport, and how we'd kind of develop those in such a way to become better humans and to be able to serve and give that back to future.

I really agree with you. Kevin has covered has taught some really critical and important lessons, you know, and I've been writing those down, planning on using them when we do get to, you know, slowly back into the pool. Yeah, well, we don't forget what what the priorities are and what's important. Yeah.

Oh, interesting. Very good stuff. Well, I love to talk a little bit about waterpolo in New Mexico. Right. I mean, I think most people probably don't think waterpolo when they think New Mexico. But you've got a great you've got great clubs there and great teams and you're building some leagues. I mean, you had mentioned that you grew up in New Mexico playing water polo. So it's been there for a little while. You kind of give us an idea of the scene there in New Mexico.

Well, so we've built a lot since nineteen ninety nine. There was a I came back, I developed rheumatoid arthritis and my national team days were over. There was a gentleman named Scott Tatchell and he asked me to I was waitressing or something, and he asked me to help him start this club up because there really wasn't any water polo going on there. My coach had retired and so we started Albuquerque Water Polo Club and then he moved to California three months later. So I found myself at like twenty three running this club. Get out. Yeah. Party building it. And then in 2000, that spring, I was really blessed with a board of parents that were very supportive and patient with a 23 year old that had a lot of ideas. And so we started the high school league that season. 2000 was the first year we had like forty five kids, three teams. It was a little piddly thing, but it was a start. The next year we went to one hundred kids. So we build this to two thousand six, read about two hundred and fifty plus kids. AWP was around 70 kids or so. We were doing pretty well in the zone and those were the only two programs at that time I left to go.

Coach, it is you. For four years Janet and Huffman started. She was coaching with me for a little while and then she had the opportunity to get a position at Branch with Duke City Aquatics. Right. You took over the high school league when I left about five years ago now. She gave me the high school league back to continue to run. And and she continued to build a really great program with Duke City Aquatics. You know, she has different we both have different athletes that have made national team they and Monk and Duke City Aquatics is also an Albuquerque for those of her. Yes. Yeah. We actually practice at the same pool back to back, which is a bummer. Not not because of that, but just because in the entire state, the two programs that any athlete has the opportunity are at the same pool. Right. You know, when you can have an east side, west side where we can try to hit more, you know, place and so but full time is limited here and, you know, you do what you do. So Janet's recently retired, but she she's she did a trip, you know, a lot of tremendous hard work with with Dixie aquatics running, both swimming and water polo. And then Albuquerque Water Polo Club is just year round water polo.

The high school league is now back up around two hundred athletes and had dissipated quite a bit, but it's doing really well. And then Albuquerque Water Polo Club worried about one hundred and twenty athletes. I'm not sure Duke Cities numbers do well. And the main thing, the second around, after coming back from coaching at LSU and having My Child series, which, you know, I took the first couple years off when she was little, when I reinstated Albuquerque Water Polo Club in 2011, the priority was the Splash Ball program. This time, you know, I learned a lot over in that time period and that hiatus of making sure to have stronger roots in a program so that if if the head leaves, the program doesn't die. Right. What roots? And, you know, that's kind of the history in a nutshell. Right now, we've got the high school league, Duke City Aquatics. The new guy that's taking over is Darrell Wells. He's a great guy. He coached one of the high school league teams and is primarily a year round swim coach. But he's going to work on the water polo side now, too. And and then my program and those are the three programs out here.

So with it within the high school league, are they are athletes participating for their own high school or are you combining teams together?

Well, how oh, how how is that kind of develop from a team standpoint?

Too many of the teams were combined when I took it back over. So my goal has been to divorce these teams. Yeah, we have pure teams, quote unquote. Right. And so because we're working on getting an order for me to take the information and get recognized as an up and coming sport again right now with NRMA, which has been to Mexico Activities Association, we need more pure teams. You know, if we have two of our largest high schools combined into one team, they're going to ask why we don't have the numbers to support two of the largest high schools. Raro, you know, I know the numbers have increased by a lot. Most of the teams. We have very few married teams right now. So they are representing their school. But we do have, you know, athletes that are misfits. They you know, they're they're well, especially with so many charter schools now. And but one of our charter schools is one of our strongest schools now. So we find a way to make sure that everybody's playing somehow.

And when is when is your season?

When is the high school season, of course, was canceled. Two days of. Our first game, so spring as well.

What is the play look like, are you doing. Weekend tournament for the high school league? Are you doing scheduling their own games? How does that all work?

So what I do is they practice during the week. They only practice twice a week. They pay for the for the league. So we have to be careful with how much they're practicing because of the pay for the coaches and then the pay the full time. And then I set a schedule and we practice we we have games on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. And we used to do Sundays, but we have so many forfeit because a lot of people don't want to play on Sunday. And it's not just it's not just our Mormon kids out here. I mean, there's a lot of families making that choice. And myself, I don't like to miss church on Sunday mornings. And so I. And also, enemy aid doesn't play high school, doesn't play any sports on Sunday, so we're trying to adhere to that as well so that they recognize this as a sport.

Do you do you have an idea in terms of the process of getting that sanctioned? What does that look like for you?

Well, first, we get recognized as an emerging sport. I think once we get recognized, then we'll keep an eye on us and our stats and what's going on in the growth and all of that. Until then, they don't even care. We're not even on the radar. It's not that they don't care. It's just that we're not a lot of up and coming sport. Like you said.

Interesting.

Any other kind of thoughts about just the play and the history of New Mexico and kind of a status in there in New Mexico?

I think it's an interesting for people to hear what was happening in different in different areas that there may not be participating in.

Well, I don't I don't know if this is a good time for us to talk about the Splosh Ball. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, for sure. This is like I honestly think that one of the biggest things that's really cool out here is people are shocked at our Splash Ball program. We're in the middle of the desert. Our Splash Ball program goes on a waitlist every season. Last season, the only reason we didn't go on a wait list was because we now have two sessions so we can where we can up the numbers up to 70 and but we have it spread out a little bit. So we're not so saturated in our pool space where deep water, we're most blash balls in shallow. And we always have now 50 to 70 athletes. For a long time it was just fifty five. That was the cutoff. And then, oh, a wait list of anywhere from five to 15 kids. So we've built this from scratch. 2000. Let's see. Siri, Siri, my daughter, 2013. The spring of 2013 is the first year we had six kids. Yeah. And we just didn't have whatever. Now over that time period in that growth and it was only two years before we ended up on waitlists and the numbers were lower. But we have a staff of nine phenomenal coaches. We have we have it separated out. So it's flash ball one on one to one to four.

So it's not just like splash ball four. Also, we start them at age four. Wow. Right. So we have splash ball. One on one is like eight four five one two six seven one. The threes like six to eight and then one to four, which is our bridge program. And this is what's been so huge. And what I would encourage any clubs that want the roots is our squash ball. One of four is anywhere from seven to nine every now and then of super that six year old. And so as they go through the program, they go from the splash ball best onto a noodle to offer noodle and then the one before we bridge them. So splash ball for us is the lower program that we go into. The upper program, which is the lowest of that is our Stars team, which is our 10 and under team. So the one of the force go once a week to splash ball and then they go once a week. They get invited for free to go to stars so they can start the bridge. Because if you graduate with a lot of the lower program and you just throw them into the upper program, they're not ready yet for the extra hour stuff. And so the Splash Ball program out here is is been a huge success for us.

I mean, that's amazing. Sounds to have that many kids and it sounds so well organized in terms of one step to the up to the next.

I was going I was going to kind of be my next question in terms of if there's a program administrator or a coach out there saying, hey, we need to invest in in Splash Ball, what are some what are some pro tips? What are what are the what are the elements of like as you're getting started? This is what you're gonna pull your hair out, but you have to do X, Y, Z to make it be successful.

The first thing is I would create a budget and the and and a recognition that you need to invest in the program and it pays off like, you know. And but it doesn't at first. The first couple seasons, you know, your program is is is taking a hit because it's not super cheap, the splash ball busts and everything. Yeah. And then the second thing that I would say is don't give up. I I've worked with and heard from more coaches that they it's hard. Some coaches are great. Ten and under coaches. Right. And then there's those of us that work better with high school kids. I love their minds in high school. They're also deviant and I just love it. I love this age. Right. You know, and just these little mini monsters. And for me, ten and under is not my forte. Splash ball I do well with and then it's high school and I skipped this group. So you got start to like assess your coaches and figure out who's really warm and fuzzy and who works well with this younger age group, you know, certain coaches working with five year olds.

Right. And then the other thing is, is to stick to it. I've had more coach. Does that say, well, we only had six or seven come out and so then that gets his heart it so what? So you you make it happen with the six kids and then you figure out what's going on, and then you ask them to bring a friend and you have a bring a friend practice and you have popsicles and, you know, whatever. And there's always something to engage the kids. And the truth is, is. And at first you need to have an advertising budget and it will pay off later because like now we don't we don't advertise Facebook, our parents and their pictures on Facebook. Don't you know, I haven't had advertising expense for almost four years. This last year was the first this last season only because we went to two sessions and I wanted to advertise it and get it out a little more. So I got it filled. You have to you have to be able to take that little crunch.

Right. And when and honestly, on our program, all we've done is just it's just free. Right? If you if you want to play splash ball forward, it's just free. Come on. We'll take you. You know, and that's how that's how you get them in.

So, yeah. Well, and for what you said, I've never done it free. But when we first started it, it was pretty darn cheap. Yeah. Right. And then also we figured out like so we have for us, we have a whole curriculum. You know, some people do it a six week program or whatever. Ours is a ten. We we do three, ten week programs fall, you know, spring, summer, fall. We do three a year. We have bigger breaks in between because they're little, you know, we kind of have it down with that, the coaches meetings and everything. And, you know, if there's ever a coach or a program director that wants information about how how we do it, that way they can take ideas and then, you know, implement their own. Right. I think if you get the pool time and you have the proper safety equipment and. Oh, and then the other thing is coach athlete ratio, you got to watch that. And are the coaches in the water. So what we. Yes and no. So the one I once had one or two. Absolutely. We have one coach in. One coach out. One of fours. We have the coach out but sometimes gets in depending on, you know, like showing things. But we start to have that coach out more because in Stars the Ten and under that, they need to start getting used to there's bigger numbers per coach. So the coaches need to be on deck more because they the kids better, although all our coaches get in the water at some point.

Yeah. So tell me tell me a success story. You've got you've got this one or one through one or four into stars.

And obviously they lead in your twelve and 14 and 16 and 18 you've got. How what kind of overall impact has that had on the overall success of your club? We are ten and unders.

We're not always good, but our 10 and unders, like whenever we have a home tournament, we'll have twenty four kids. We are down to whether we do well or not is debatable. And I did in that in that term.

I mean I define success in terms of athletes who want to play waterpolo.

Right. And they want to continue in so well.

So what I have found that I find is successful is, you know, with any with an organization, when you're building a program, you have about a third. You retain about a third. A third are coming in that are new and a third are leaving. They're going to another sport. Whatever it is, they're happy. They're just trying something else. Waterpolo is not for everybody. That's. Yeah. And neither is ballet, you know. So they. And so if you watch your numbers, how many you're retaining, how many are leaving and how many are coming in that are new, that will help, you know, what kind of success you're having with the program and then the kids that are staying. That's a third of 50 kids that are now aging up into our upper program. It used to be that we were scrounging for 10 and unders and twelve and unders, trying to recruit as much as possible with our two or three kids. Well, our special program just feeds it now. I mean, and then there and then their friends are telling each other and the other that and some and some of them. We lose that bridge from lower program to upper program. Sometimes it's too much. And they realize that this isn't for me right now. We're working on that, actually trying to figure out like, are we still not having enough fun with the Ten and unders or is it just a natural transition at that rate? Yeah.

You know, we're always looking at these statistics and stuff, but I truly like. So we have kids series. My daughter, we've got this kid, Emmett nine. He started it four or five series started at five and now they're eleven, 12 years old. And, you know, they're really solid players. Series eleven and Emmet's nine, almost 10. And there's just there's quite a few of them that are up in our upper program now that started in Splash Ball. So we're not having to teach Eggbeater and some of the fundamentals that continue to work on it. But usually it is your ten or eleven how to eggbeater, but you know how to catch a ball. But now these kids actually have a background. They can't do a. Very well, went right for it all. But you're planting seeds. It's delacourt planting seeds. And what others? All the sports. I mean, look at football. They've got all those little babies out there doing flag football. And they all got soccer age 18 months old, which is where I stole a lot of these ideas event early on. Like for some of our splash ball with certain rights. Well, it's a no brainer for it for everybody in our sport that's running a club to have splash ball.

Right. Interesting. What? Just from your, again, veteran experience in terms of growing clubs, participating in leagues. Maybe there's someone out there who is not necessarily new, but they want to expand their club. They want to expand. They want to grow. Right. I mean, Splash Ball is obviously the first thing you would say. What other advice might you give them in terms of coming back to this? What's a pro tip in terms of building and maintaining club in a world where they may not know what waterpolo is as far as the coach not knowing what to get?

No, no, no. What the like in a community like we're outside of California, you know, same thing in Utah.

Same thing in Colorado. Like water polo. Like I've heard of that kind of what. But how do you how do you pull a kid into the culture of the water of water polo?

Well, I'll be honest. Like, one of the things that has been a very, very humbling understanding over the years of coaching. We can think and have very high opinions of ourselves as coaches sometimes. Right. Kids follow their peers. They will leave. Eighty five percent of kids if they're not happy and they're not having fun. We'll leave a program and they will leave the sport. And we don't want that with water polo. Now, we do have that top tier that it's in their blood now and they're not leaving no matter what. And they'll go and they'll follow a high level coach no matter what. Right. Right. Ticket. It's about it's about family. It's about like making the team a family. Right. And they will take that with them for the rest of their lives. You know, these people that they have had a fantastic experience with and they attach that emotion to the sport. So 10 percent finish of the kids, top level athletes, they're just like in, right? Yeah. Then you've got 80 percent and they've got 10 percent that whatever. They don't like it or 20 percent. But the rest of them, that middle group is the largest group and the the emotion connected with the peer group and the way that you run your program. And that's why we're working. The whole athlete is so critical. Right. In my opinion right now. And I just think that it gets lost a lot of times to winning being the priority. Right.

And those aren't the lessons that kids take away when you have kids that come back 10 years later. They're not talking about certain wins. Right. I mean, maybe one or two here or there. But they talk about family variances. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been that's been huge.

You know, like coaching long enough to have. And then, of course, tons of my kids, their kids are in the program now, you know, and they're little ones, little babies. So I think that I think that things need to be kept in perspective. Interesting. That's great. You're building age group now. If your national team coach. That's totally different. Right? Your job, right? Yeah.

Let's shift topics a little bit. Let's talk about the mountain zone.

So Mount Zone is the largest geographical zone in the United States. New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, with some long stretches, a road between cities where we play.

I would love you've been part of Mountain Zone since its inception. You've coached in it.

You've done ODP love bigger when it was the southwest zone and Texas was included with us.

Yeah. Yeah. So I would love your thoughts and perspectives of how we as a zone and coaches and close within the zone can do a better job of coming together, supporting athletes, supporting supporting waterpolo as a sport and within within our geographical limits there.

How do we how do we help each other? Yeah. And I think that we do some things really well. You know, as far as ODP, you know, people have been really trying hard to communicate and trying to figure out what's bad just geographically and everything. But I think that when it comes to individual clubs, we have a hard time thinking outside of the box. We are only thinking about and it's natural to think about exactly how certain decisions will affect our kids in our program, because that's what we do closest to. That's it. Our job is. But I think that I think that as a bunch of coaches that have so much heart for the sport and love. For I just think that we could be more open minded to different experiences and opportunities, you know, for what's best for the kids. Like I know for us we don't do Gio's. And I just find my kids out to other teams for Gio's, because as a program, we will place very high. Agio. We spend a lot of money for not the greatest results and, you know, playing in lower pools and lower level referees and stuff. And I just think that there's some really fascinating things that could happen and could occur in our zone if we could step back. You know, sometimes when you're in it, it's so hard to, like, expand. But one of the things that we do really well for the most part is, you know, we have certain marquee tournaments. You know, we've got grear for, you know, Duke, unfortunately, couldn't have their tournament in the spring. Who knows if my end of September tournament will happen? You know, Utah has some different things going on with tournaments. And what is the one the biggest comes to?

The summer games, you tell four games, four games.

And geographically, it's easier for certain states to hit, you know, different tournaments. But we have the mountain zone championships that, you know, six years ago or seven years ago, they started rotating per state so that we could support every state. Yeah. So there's been some other decisions that have been really positive. And I remember when they were initially happening, there was a lot of, like, uproar about doing it. But then once we did it, it was like, oh, this is really good. Sometimes changes can be there's fear and change. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I don't know. I think I think that we do really well. Then there's other things that we just kind of limit ourselves on, on vision. Right.

Interesting. Great.

Great perspectives. Well, I really appreciate the time that we've spent here today.

Any any other kind of thoughts or comments you've had, as we've kind of prepared back and forth through the podcast that you'd like to share?

Well, I just think what you're doing is really great, to be honest. I think it's really fun idea. And as far as thinking outside of the box, I think this is a really cool, cool saying, you know, not everybody can can do it. And, you know, a lot of people and have a lot of connections. And I so I just think that it's I'm excited to see where this what direction this goes and, you know, where it leads and how it can help people. And I see that the more that we can all come together and help each other, it would just be fantastic. You know, so that we're always, you know, learning what's what's working. And and it's it's just special. We have a lot of people in this zone that have a lot of love for this sport.

Yeah, well, that is for sure. Yeah. You can always have a passionate conversation just about any any day.

So really, I got to where we are, right. No matter where you are, no matter where you are. The kitchen referee room.

That's good stuff. It's good stuff. And I know and that's that's the hope is that at least can start some conversation and maybe get people thinking a little bit outside of what we have done.

I mean, what we have we want to celebrate what we have done, honor the history, and then kind of look back and be visionary and see what we can do in terms of the future of the sport and how we can, in the end, toward the athlete, support the sport, honor the sport. I want to make sure that that's one of the key things.

First and foremost, support the athlete. And I think that everybody can get better at that, at that level and at that perspective. And it's and that ultimately the team just grows because of it.

Yeah, for sure. OK. So here's my final question. Are you ready? I've been asking everyone this question. OK.

You have lots of you have lots of experience as a coach, as an athlete, as an administrator. So one of my things is I love music and I'm starting the salty splash song list. And apparently I love alliteration as well. What is that song? What is that one song that, like, gets you ready to play some water polo or coach and water polo like it's your go to your go to song?

Oh, that's a tough question. All I do is listen to Christian music. Fear is a liar from those back. But let's see a song that more people would know. I might have to get back to you on that.

We can go with fear is a liar. I mean, that's a great message, right?

I was just trying to remember his last name, of course, because I have brain freeze. He's one of my favorite Christian artists right now. But fear is a liar by him is just like incredible, especially if you watch the video. And I think the reason for me with that is because that's what we're trying to break through is so many I they don't have these mental blocks in the other.

Sure. And I loved and I loved what you were saying about the mental strength and the mental toughness and the mental training.

And it goes with that. And I think we didn't really talk much about that.

But as coaches, really, especially in our current society and the all of the things that are changing, we've got to teach our athletes about the importance of mental health and what fear can and can't do for you, right?

Absolutely. And it's Zach Williams, by the way, William. There it is. OK, Goldie, while you were talking. Fair enough. Now you're absolutely right. End to end. We're in different times right now. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Robbie, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed you. That was wonderful. All right. Let's have a great day and let's we'll be excited. We get back in the water and see each other at some tournaments here in the future.

Hopefully soon. Thanks so much. Bye bye.

Thanks again to Robbie Bova, Albuquerque water polo club, head coach, USA Waterpolo, ODP coach, pass, college water polo, national champion and MVP for some incredible insights about her journey in the game. Please subscribe rate. Give a five star review and share the podcasts and follow us on social media. If you just can't get enough waterpolo podcasts, check out Steve Careers Pod off the deck where Steve talks to many of the best coaches in the game. We also like Tony Acevedo's podcast, the Tony Azevedo podcast hosted by Dave Williamson as they look at waterpolo through the lens of Tony's five Olympic Games and future focused mindset. Check out what's going on in Texas at the Texas Waterpolo podcast and in the Midwest at Nearside Low podcast. All very interesting conversations working to support the game we love. We are just trying to make a journey to be a voice for sport, growth and culture in the waterpolo wilderness. Always honor the game and keep your head on a pivot until next time. Peace.

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