Water polo turns to Cuba for revival

WATER POLO is back in action with a new coach from Cuba leading what the sport’s administrators hope will be a stable and progressive programme.

Vice president of the Aquatic Sports Association of Jamaica (ASAJ) in charge of water polo, Lance Rochester, said the development of water polo had been “significantly and adversely” affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the setback, the organisation is making efforts to support the growth of the sport locally.

“In many ways we are actually restarting some aspects of our programme, for example, we have to be recruiting again because we were not able to do that over the two-year period,” Rochester said.

“We are putting a lot of emphasis on our ‘Pickney Polo’ programme, which is 10 and under, that’s our introductory programme to try and get new players involved. What we are also doing is trying to get our players from the past involved to try and get our activities going again and fortunately, we have a new coach who is going to assist us with that mission.”

The Cuba-born coach, Adrian Sanchez, who said he has been practising water polo from the age of nine, was part of the Cuban national youth and senior teams but is now tasked with getting good performances out of Jamaicans.

“My idea is to work on the tactical technical part of this sport and on resistance in order to achieve good performances from the team,” he said.

Sanchez said coaching is his way of giving back to Jamaica.

“I worked as a coach in Cuba for a very short time (but) I needed to attend to my mother’s illness. But I studied and gave training courses. I decided to come to live in Jamaica, and I always thought of being able to serve as a coach for this country,” Sanchez said.

ENJOYABLE EXPERIENCE

He said the members of the Jamaican team have made this an enjoyable experience for him so far.

“They (the players) feel the passion for this sport that is beautiful and very healthy.

“(This) creates a programme that is not only training but also fun, in order to achieve permanence,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez said he is ready to take on the challenge and he hopes to help the team become globally competitive.

“For my pleasure and for that of this country, I would like to be able to take the team to an international level. I think that talent is like a diamond in the rough that would have to be polished. Just work on it and you will see the result,” he said.

Rochester said he was very happy to have Sanchez in the programme and he is expecting great things from him.

“We expect him to aid us in ensuring stability in the programme, in terms of the human resources, to devote attention to development and also in terms of expansion of the programme outside of Kingston because one of our critical agenda items is all-island water polo and swimming which will take some time,” Rochester said.

To achieve these goals, Rochester said for now, they have to focus on increasing local water polo activities.

“First jump for us now is local activities, local competitions, local club leagues, training, perhaps even bringing down coaches for clinics and so on before we even look about what we are going to try and achieve in terms of world ranking,” he said.

“We are looking to have an internal competition towards the end of this month, a one-day tournament, before our overseas-based players go back to school.”

Sanchez is not the only international influence the team has had since the resumption of the programme as they had a two-day clinic with Italian water polo star Alex Giogetti.

“We actually had a clinic earlier this month where an Italian national player, who won a silver medal in the London Olympics in 2012 and won the World Championships in 2011 for Italy, along with several other Euro league titles,” Rochester said.

“They really benefited from his presence and what he was able to impart.”

Rochester said ASAJ is also making plans to establish beach polo.