‘A lot of fun’: Alabama HS starts water polo team – AL.com
James Clemens swimmer Zack Mendenhall was looking for an additional sport that featured the physicality of football.
The freshman found water polo, a sport his dad, Brett, played in high school in Utah.
Now, Mendenhall gets the chance to play high school water polo, too.
James Clemens has launched a club water polo team, and Jets officials believe it’s the first high school in Alabama to start a water polo team.
The Jets have joined the Tennessee Interscholastic Water Polo Association High School League, which includes club teams from Memphis, Nashville and Knoxville, and the Jets open the team’s inaugural season Saturday at the Huntsville Aquatics Center against Brentwood (Tenn.).
“I love it,” Mendenhall said of water polo. “I like the strategy and the underwater aspect to it, and there’s a lot of skill required so I like that.”
Jets coach Eric Demirjian, who played at Georgia Tech from 1996-2001, said his new team has grown to 17 players as the word spread, and the roster includes three girls.
Most are James Clemens students but there are players from other high schools and from middle school. The club team is sponsored by the Huntsville Water Polo Association, which formed two years ago.
“Our goals are pretty simple,” Demirjian said. “We want to establish water polo in Alabama permanently. That’s our No. 1 goal. We want to teach the game of water polo that a lot of us coaches grew up loving to a new generation of athletes. And then really our third goal is to represent Alabama in the Tennessee Interscholastic Water Polo Association as well as we can. We’re representing all of Alabama, and we need to treat it as such.
“I believe we’ll be very competitive. We actually hosted the Tennessee state championship last May, and we’ve been building the team since then.”
The TIWPA championship tournament will be played May 1-3 at the Huntsville Aquatics Center and is sponsored by the Huntsville Sports Commission.
Abdul Aziz Alawadhi aims toward the goal while opposing players defend during a Jets scrimmage late last month at the Dublin Park Pool in Madison.Skip Vaughn | AL.com
Demirjian’s assistant coaches include Mike Reilly, Steve Shaw and Brooke Buchanan.
“I think it’s a lot of fun just because it’s a lot about teamwork,” said Buchanan, a UAH freshman who played six years in high school in Shaver Lake, California. “And you play with people close together so it’s a pretty good bonding experience.”
Aloysius Schram, an eighth-grader at Liberty Middle, usually plays driver or wing. The James Clemens swimmer said he enjoys the team aspect of this sport.
“Swimming can get a little bit repetitive,” Schram said. “Since water polo is a team sport, it’s more fun since you compete with the team, not just train with the team. In swimming you just train with the team and you have to compete by yourself.”
Yousif Alawadhi, a James Clemens junior, is the most experienced player. He played for a club team in his native Kuwait from ages 5-15 before arriving in Madison a year and a half ago.
“It is a hard sport, and it is for the smart people,” Alawadhi said. “And I like the teamwork.”
