Water Polo the Y's Way

By Chuck Hines

CHUCK HINES enjoyed a 40-year career with the YMCA, during which he
was a strong advocate of the Olympic sport of water polo. He was a three-time
All-America player, and he coached teams at three YMCAs that won national
championships. His teams all started out at the beginning level, in small pools and
with insufficient equipment, and fought their way to the top. This book is the story
of those teams and their rags to riches achievements. The author has written two
instructional texts on water polo and has served as chairman of national committees
for the Amateur Athletic Union, American Swimming Coaches Association, and
YMCA of the USA. He was an officer of the U.S. Olympic Water Polo Committee
for the Games of 1972, which found the American men bringing home the bronze
medal. His YMCA girls team won the gold medal at the Junior Olympics and
competed at the World Womens Water Polo Club Championships in 1977. In
recent years, he has been a historian for the sport, writing numerous articles for the
YMCAs national magazine and the Water Polo Planet web-site. Now retired and
a member of the Western North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Mr. Hines and his
wife Lee and family members reside in Asheville, North Carolina.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 17, 2008
• ISBN: 9781467048996

Chuck Hines

For 55 years, author Chuck Hines has been a leader in the Olympic sport of water polo, resulting in his receiving the coveted Paragon Prize from the International Swimming Hall of Fame. A three-time All-America player in his younger days, he coached teams from three YMCAs that won national titles, with his girls' team copping the gold medal and three silver medals at the Junior Olympics and representing the U.S. at the World Women's Club Championships. He has served as chairman of national committees for the Amateur Athletic Union, American Swimming Coaches Association, and YMCA of the USA. In addition, he was secretary of the U.S. men's Olympic team that brought home the bronze medal from the Munich Olympics, and he was a Torchbearer for the Atlanta Olympics, from which he earned a gold medallion for his volunteerism. In retirement, he is serving as Historian for American Water Polo and Water Polo Planet. His previous book, Water Polo The Y's Way, was published by AuthorHouse. A member of the Western North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and the U.S. Pioneer Coaches of Women's Water Polo Hall of Honor, Mr. Hines and his family members reside in Asheville, North Carolina.

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Contents

Foreward

Introduction

YMCA Water Polo

At Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota

YMCA Water Polo

At Des Moines, Iowa

YMCA Water Polo

At Canton, Illinois

YMCA Boys Water Polo

At Asheville, North

Carolina

YMCA Girls Water Polo

At Asheville, North

Carolina

Part I

YMCA Girls Water Polo

At Asheville, North

Carolina

Part II

YMCA Water Polo

At Asheville, North

Carolina

The New Era

YMCA Water Polo

In The New Millennium

Memories And

Remembrances

The Last Lob

Coach’s Concluding Comments

Acknowledgements

Foreward

By Randy Bugos, President and CEO

YMCA of Coastal Georgia, Inc.

The Beijing Olympics were on the air – on TV. It was water polo that was being played. As I sat on my couch watching the U.S. men’s team take a surprise win over Croatia, the phone rang. It was my best friend of 35 years, Chip O’Hern from Orlando, Florida, and he was screaming, Did you see that shot, did you see our guy shoot the ball into the net without turning around?

I calmly replied that I was indeed watching the game – Chip instinctively knew I’d be watching, which is what best friends are all about – and I said, yes, I saw our guy score with a backhand shot and that when I was playing water polo many years ago, the backhand had been one of my favorite moves.

We stayed on the phone for quite awhile talking back and forth as the game progressed. I answered many of his questions about the nuances of the game. Chip never got to see me play polo during my high school or college days, but he was certainly aware of the fact that I’d been a poloist, which according to him put me in pretty rare company. I guess he was right. Not too many people can say they’ve played competitive water polo.

Chip’s call, as well as the TV coverage of our men’s and women’s silver medal teams at the Summer Olympic Games of 2008, hosted by Beijing, China, brought back many memories for me. Just for a minute or two, I wanted to get back in the pool and set up in my favorite spot and see if I still had what it takes. But it wasn’t long before I came to my senses and realized that it would be better for me to write about some of those past experiences instead of trying to find a Speedo that would fit.

It was in the hole – nowadays called the set position – at the opposing team’s two-yard line with my back against their goal and the defender draped over me – that I always felt I had the upper hand. Except for one time, and more on that in a moment. The hole spot was right where I wanted to be, because I knew one of my YMCA teammates would be throwing a pass from mid-pool that would be landing a foot or two in front of me. This would provide me with an ever-widening array of options to score a goal for our Y team.

I could whip a wicked backhand shot past the goalie and into the cage. Or I could place my right hand on top of the ball, hook my opponent with my left arm and leg (underwater) and shoot a powerful sweep shot. If the goalie was in the proper position, I could put the ball on the water, take a swift stroke or two, and do a quick lift and pop shot. Or once to the side, I could bounce a shot off the surface of the water. Or I could fake that shot and loft my trusty old ‘lob’ to the other side of the cage. Of course, there was nothing better than being in that spot and seeing a teammate streaking down the pool, pulling up and receiving a pass from me, and in one fluid movement catching the ball and firing it into a near-empty cage. Oh yeah, I do remember! It was a great feeling 40 years ago, except for that one time in that one game.

The one game occurred at the 1969 YMCA Boys National Championships, and I’m reminded that while the author of this book insists his memory is pretty good – most of us who know him would say it’s excellent – he can’t remember everything. As you’ll see when you read this book, Chuck Hines hasn’t forgotten the losses or the missed shots in which he was involved as a player and coach. The same is true for me in this instance. Although everything eventually ended up in our favor, I mostly recall the three sweep shots at the Y Championships – two from the right side, one from the left – that sailed wide of the opposing goal and echoed off the cement block wall that surrounded the pool. Ka-boom. Ka-boom. Ka-boom!

We lost that game by a couple of goals, and it was a big, burly defender from the other team who was mostly responsible for my shots going wide. He was the only opponent all year long who really gave me a problem when I was in my favorite spot. Later, as mentioned in this book, we discovered that the team that had beaten us had used a couple of over-age players, one of whom was the big hole defender who’d been hanging all over me. Thus our Canton, Illinois, boys water polo team was subsequently awarded the legitimate YMCA national title.

Isn’t it funny how 40 years later I can recall those three missed shots and very little about the game or the rest of the tournament? I guess I’ve come to expect that as we age, there will be many things we don’t remember. And sometimes the things we hold on to are not always the best memories. But they are memories nonetheless, and maybe, maybe, those missed shots and missed opportunities will take us back to other moments in our lives that were more positive and rewarding. Maybe they will ring a bell for us as clearly as if they’d happened just yesterday.

One such memory of mine was on our return from an Olympic Development Clinic and Tournament at Des Moines, Iowa. The date was July 20, 1969. While we were driving back to Canton in our cars, we were all tuned in and mesmerized by the radio as the announcer explained that our astronauts had just landed the lunar module Eagle at the Sea of Tranquility on the surface of the moon. It was a clear night, and we could look up out of the car windows as we were whizzing along the highway and see the full, bright moon in the sky as the story continued to unfold on our car radios. I don’t remember the results of the tourney at Des Moines, but I distinctly recall staring at the moon for a long time that night and thinking it would be an occasion I’d never forget.

Still to this day, there are times when I look up into the evening sky and see a full moon and it takes me back to that night about 40 years ago, rekindling great thoughts about past days and all of the wonderful blessings and memories that were – that are – a part of my YMCA water polo experiences.

The trip to Des Moines in July of 1969 was Chuck Hines’ last one with our Canton YMCA teams. A few weeks later, he departed for Asheville, North Carolina, where he’s continued to reside with his family. But he has remained involved with water polo ever since. And now he’s working with some of us to compile this history of an important era in YMCA aquatics, when water polo was a sanctioned Y sport.

I hope that you enjoy remembering and re-living those bygone days as we celebrate together the successes we achieved. We were, after all, that rare breed known as YMCA water polo champions.

Introduction

Standing on the deck of the immense 50-meter indoor pool at Ste-Foy, a suburb of Quebec City, Canada, I knew the sport of water polo was in the process of changing forever. One era was ending. A new era was beginning.

Several hundred spectators stood at varying degrees of attention as the national anthem was played. It wasn’t our American national anthem but O Canada. Then the Dutch national anthem was played and, finally, our U.S. national anthem.

We were there, the teams from three countries, for the first-ever real women’s international water polo tournament. It was April 1, 1977.

The two or three other countries where the women’s game was being played at that time in history also had been invited, but they hadn’t shown up. So we were down to five teams representing Canada and two from the U.S. and one, the favorite, from The Netherlands. The first game was about to get under way, pitting the strong, experienced Dutch women against a much younger group of teenaged girls from the U.S. It was Hilversum versus Asheville. And I was the Asheville coach.

Our team of teen girls had been invited to represent the East Coast of the U.S. Our girls were good but no better than the standout women’s team from the Miami area of Florida or the top women’s teams from California. At one time or another, we had beaten the Floridians and the California clubs – Anaheim, Fresno, Cerritos, Commerce – but they had defeated us, too, in national competition. You’ll read more about these games in the pages to come.

I assumed that Asheville had been invited to attend this tournament for three reasons. First, our girls were definitely among the very best the U.S. had to offer. Second, we had invited the Canadian clubs to come and compete at our tourneys in Asheville and elsewhere in the U.S. in the past. Third, I had recently completed 11 years of service as chairman of the AAU Women’s Water Polo Committee and therefore was playing a reasonably significant role in the growth of the sport nationally. I had just been named chairman of the International Women’s Water Polo Committee as we sought to grow globally.

As our reward, the Asheville girls and I were now kicking-off what was being called the World Women’s Water Polo Club Championships by facing the Dutch ladies from Hilversum. Asheville averaged 18½ years of age. Hilversum averaged about 28. Our girls had been playing together for five or six years. The Dutch grande dames had been playing together for 15 or 16 years. The result of this first matchup of a young U.S. women’s team against the best European women’s team was predictable. The final score was Hilversum 10, Asheville 5.

Which wasn’t that bad, considering the circumstances. Many years later, I wrote a report on our participation in this major tournament for the history section of the Asheville Citizen-Times. The paper headlined the article as follows: Women’s Water Polo Team Blazed Trail.

Here’s what I wrote: "It was in 1977 that our Asheville YMCA girls represented the Eastern U.S. in the first World Women’s Water Polo Club Championships, conducted at Montreal and Quebec City, Canada. The Y team, of which I was the coach, had won nine national AAU and YMCA tourneys from 1971 through 1976 while competing from Philly to Fresno and from Miami to Honolulu. But we were still surprised to receive an invitation to compete in the aforementioned event being hosted by the Canadians…

"While men’s water polo dates back to the 1860s, it wasn’t until the 1960s that American women started playing this rough, tough game on a regular basis. The objective of the tourney was to show FINA, the world governing body for aquatic sports, that women could indeed play water polo and that the sport should be included in the Olympic Games…

"At first we rejected the invitation. Some of our best players had just graduated from high school and were now attending colleges in four different states. Furthermore, our eight-month YMCA water polo season occurred over the spring, summer, and autumn months, and the competition at Montreal and Quebec City was scheduled for March 30 through April 4. The winter was our off-season, when the Y girls normally took part in other sports such as competitive swimming, skiing, and basketball. We knew we could not possibly be at our best in early April, which was the very beginning of our season…

"Then the hosting Canadians sweetened the pot. They offered to pay most of our expenses including round-trip airfare, lodging, breakfast each day, and even car rental. We had only to pay a $50-per-player entry fee to cover the officiating, plus the cost of our lunches and dinners. Well, we had to eat somewhere, didn’t we? Why not in Montreal and Quebec City?

"In preparation for the tournament, we patched together a series of brief weekend practices during February and March, all of them in our small four-lane, 25-yard Asheville YMCA pool. Three of our best players were not available, but I flew with 11 others through New York City into Montreal. Making the trip were Margaret Boyd, Melisa Crawford, DeeDee Dave, Tricia Derrough, Molly Griffin, Connie Hartman, Karen Hartman, Tina Hartman, Elizabeth Jeter, Susan Sessler, and Nina VanderRee…

"We played two exhibition games in the gigantic 50-meter indoor pool at Montreal that had been used for the 1976 Olympic Games, and then we drove to Quebec City and played four official games at another huge 50-meter indoor pool in suburban Ste-Foy. After having had just a few practices back home in our small YMCA pool, the games in Canada were like moving from a bathtub to the wide expanse of the ocean…

"We didn’t do as well as we’d hoped, winning two games, tying one, and losing three. The team from Hilversum went undefeated and won the tourney title, edging Ste-Foy by one goal in the championship contest. Afterwards, they told us, ‘Your team could become good if you keep playing together for another five or six years.’

"Be that as it may, it was a wonderful experience for our Asheville girls. They wore red, white, and blue suits donated by Speedo and had the privilege of being one of the two teams representing our country in the first women’s international water polo competition…

In 1979, FINA recognized women’s water polo as an official and sanctioned international sport, although it wasn’t until 2000 that women were finally admitted to the Olympic water polo program.

Yes, that’s what I wrote for the newspaper. It was indeed a privilege for our Asheville girls from the rather remote mountains of Western North Carolina to be part of this event in 1977.

But let’s return to the beginning of this special era in water polo, to a time 20 years earlier, in 1957, when I picked up a water polo ball for the first time.

By Chuck Hines, Asheville, NC, April 2009

(Updated in February 2012, when this book was

republished. It is the newer and slightly revised

version that you are now reading).

YMCA Water Polo

At Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota

We knew water polo was a rough and rugged sport. Not for sissies. Nonetheless we’d set up goals on opposite sides of the Midway YMCA pool in St. Paul, Minnesota. Then, dividing ourselves into two teams, we tried to shoot a water polo ball into the circular opening of the opposing goal. Standing on the bottom was permitted. So were grabbing and ducking. It was a free-for-all. We called it Battle Ball and pretended it was water polo, even though we knew it wasn’t the real thing. But it was a start.

I had come to work part-time at the Midway YMCA after completing a two-year tour of duty with the U.S. Army. This included a stint in Korea, where the War had just ended. I’d been stationed at K-55, a base about 60 miles south of Seoul. We were part of the occupation forces. If you’ve ever seen the TV show M*A*S*H, that was us. But we weren’t a medical base. We were an engineering unit there to support a jet fighter squadron. I was the company clerk. Yeah, just like Radar from M*A*S*H.

One day a notice came through that the Pacific Area Armed Forces Swimming Championships were going to be conducted in Japan. Those of us in Korea could qualify in a meet to be held at Seoul. I had been a competitive swimmer since the age of 10 and eventually raced for my hometown high school in Rochester, Minnesota. As a senior, I participated in the YMCA’s National Swimming Championships. Then I attended Gustavus-Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, on a swimming scholarship. One day while sitting in the cafeteria, I noticed a young lady waiting in line. It was love at first sight. Literally. I turned to my swimming teammates and said, Do you see that girl? She’s the one I’m going to marry. I didn’t even know her name, but as I write this, Lee and I have been happily married for 55 years.

The Korean War was going on, and when I was 20, I received my draft notice. I was bused to Fort Riley in Kansas for 16 weeks of basic training, after which I was given permission to train for swimming in the small four-lane, 20-yard indoor pool at nearby Kansas State University. The Army sent me to the Midwest AAU Championships being conducted in a nice six-lane, 25-yard pool at Omaha, Nebraska, and I won the 100-yard backstroke. My parents and Lee, to whom I’d become engaged, came from Minnesota to watch. Then the Army sent me off again, this time to Korea. We spent 11 days traveling on a troop ship. It was up and down. It was up and down. It was… I was seasick the entire time. Imagine, the Midwest champ vomiting all over the place because he couldn’t take the wavy water. How humiliating.

Compared to the ocean, the Seoul Olympic Pool was relatively smooth, and I qualified there for the Pacific Area Championships. Our Army team of six swimmers, including two who were black, a rarity in those days, flew to Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan and its beautiful eight-lane, 50-meter outdoor pool, joining about 150 other Army, Air Force, and Navy swimmers from Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Okinawa, Korea, and Japan. We were given time to do some enjoyable sight-seeing in the nearby city before competing at night, under the lights. I placed third in the 100-meter backstroke and joined with breaststroker Frank Wright from West Chester State College and freestyler Frank Dooley from Ohio State University to win the 300-meter medley relay race for the Army troops in Korea. We each received a beautiful silver cup, which I‘ve retained to this day.

After a year in Korea, our entire company of about 200 men was shipped back home, and we were stationed at Camp Wolters, Texas. One day the base commander called me into his office, and as I stood at attention, he asked, You’re the swimmer?

Yes sir.

Well, you’ve done your duty overseas, and now I want you to represent our base and the Army in swimming competition.

How lucky can one guy get?

My Army swimming teammate was Ollie Davis from Honolulu, and together we went to meets in Amarillo, El Paso, Wichita, and then to New Orleans, where I copped the Southern AAU championship in the 100-meter butterfly.

Author’s Note: The butterfly stroke, with dolphin kick, had just been legalized, and I picked it up quickly and became proficient in it.

At the end of the summer, we flew in a military airplane to Sampson Air Force Base in upstate New York for the World Armed Forces Swimming Championships. We’d been practicing in a 50-meter outdoor pool at Camp Wolters and competing in various long-course meets. The World competition was contested in a 25-yard short-course indoor pool. I hadn’t practiced turns for quite awhile, and after botching a couple of them, I took a slow third in the 200-yard backstroke. I did better in the 100-yard butterfly, losing by a matter of inches to an Air Force swimmer named Jack Nelson, who the next year would represent the U.S. at the 1956 Olympic Games.

While Jack Nelson went on to Olympic fame, I returned to civilian life in Minnesota. Lee and I were married. She had attended Gustavus-Adolphus College on a nursing scholarship and had completed her nursing degree at Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul while I was serving in the Army. So when I returned, she went to work as a Registered Nurse, and I went to college at the University of Minnesota on the GI Bill. Once I got my feet on the ground, I started working part-time at the Midway YMCA.

Which brings us to our Battle Ball games. I was now 24 and coaching many of the boys from the local high schools who practiced their swimming in the Midway YMCA pool during the winter months. Minneapolis and St. Paul were at the bottom of the state’s interscholastic swimming scene. None of the schools had pools. All the practicing was done, usually several teams at a time, in YMCA pools. It was crowded and often disorganized. So I can say with a certain amount of certainty that when the boys I was coaching from St. Paul’s Murray High School won the medley relay race at the state championships, it was quite a surprise, quite an accomplishment, and it probably helped convince me to pursue a career in YMCA aquatics. The victorious quartet was comprised of Dick Swanson, backstroke; Doug Malmstrom, breaststroke; George Ubel, butterfly; and Duane Malmstrom, freestyle. I still remember their names.

However, churning up and down the pool was easy compared to our Battle Ball games. It was a rare day that someone didn’t end up with a bloody nose and the rest of us with bumps and bruises. But we enjoyed it.

I also was hired as the part-time swimming coach at the Minneapolis YWCA. We had a team of about 30 girls. This was l-o-n-g before the advent of Title IX – more on that later – and the high schools had no athletic teams for girls. None. Hard to believe nowadays, but true. It was the AAU – the Amateur Athletic Union – and the YWCA that provided girls with opportunities to compete in swimming and other sports. Our YW team started out slowly but ended up, a couple of years later, upsetting the state champs from Minneapolis’ Ascension Club. I discovered in the process that I thoroughly enjoyed working with the ladies.

Author’s Note: For those who may not know, Minneapolis and St. Paul, nicknamed the Twin Cities, are adjoining communities separated only by the Mississippi River. Minneapolis is young and brash and Protestant. St. Paul is older and staid and Catholic. But they work well together. The University of Minnesota has campuses in both communities.

In 1958, I graduated from the University with a degree in Recreation Administration and was offered a job by the Minneapolis YMCA as director of aquatics at the downtown facility. As a teenager growing up in Rochester, I had swum with and against the Y boys, and I was fully familiar with the situation there. One day shortly after I began working in Minneapolis, I was approached by a young man on the deck of the pool who asked, Have you ever played water polo? He was Ricardo Gonzalez Izquierdo, a newcomer to town from Mexico, who had represented his country in water polo at the 1955 Pan-American Games. And thus began my involvement with water polo. REAL water polo.

Our YMCA pool in downtown Minneapolis was typical for that day and age: four lanes, 20 yards long, located in the basement. Not much to work with. Yet when we learned, much to our surprise, that the YMCA of the USA had just revived its long-dormant national water polo program, we were off and running. Ricky Izquierdo spent several months teaching me the correct techniques of water polo during the autumn of 1958 and winter of 1958-59. The sport was more a combination of basketball and soccer in the pool than the slug ‘em and duck ‘em Battle Ball we’d been playing at the Midway Y. Because basketball and swimming had been my two favorite and best athletic activities as a youngster, I had no trouble learning water polo. At one time I turned to Ricky and blurted, This is MY sport!

Nor did we have any trouble recruiting players. All the Minneapolis high schools used the YMCA pool for their