#SBRLLR: Satisfaction, Not Success (Part 1)

“Whenever you get to win, you feel the satisfaction of all of your hard work, all the sacrifices, all the blood, sweat and tears. It feels right and makes you realize that you are really doing the right thing. “

― Abby Wambach

At the awards ceremony that ended my freshman year, I found myself standing on stage in front of Fallbrook’s entire student body.  Several friends stood alongside me—a fellow water polo player, a two-sport track and soccer star who’d been in my Geometry class, and a pair of standout junior varsity football players.  We’d all been nominated for the Sarkis Spanjian award, given to the school’s most outstanding scholar/athlete.  The awards committee nominated five freshmen every year, and we were meant to compete over the course of our high school careers to determine an eventual winner.  That winner would earn a nice little scholarship and widespread acclaim.  Even as mere nominees, a picture of the five of us landed in the local paper that week, but I was one of only two who’d already earned a varsity letter.

#SBRLLR: First Taste of Glory (Part 2)

I was a few weeks into the process of becoming “myself” in the pool in Vista when I arrived on the pool deck at Fallbrook for the first time for water polo tryouts.  I’d found a home on the Vista Swim Team, but now I had to find a way to fit in at my school.

Water Polo Update

If you're looking for something to watch on the Olympics today, the USA's women's team plays for gold this afternoon at 3 pm.  I somehow managed to miss their semi-final game against Australian on Tuesday, but they won it by a goal in what was supposed to be a pretty exciting game.  This game promises to be a good one, too.  The Americans are playing Spain, and from what I've seen of that Spanish team, it's a really good team despite the fact that this is the first time that the Spanish have fielded a women's water polo team.

If the USA wins today, it'll be America's first ever gold medal in women's water polo.  The match is gonna be carried live on NBC.  Or you can watch it online.

If you're wondering, the men got clobbered yesterday in their quarter-final round match against Croatia.  I don't know what to say about that.  I mean, the USA men's team looked really, really good in the early parts of the tournament, but then they lost by five goals to Serbia, and after that, they fell apart.  Hungary beat them something like 8-2, and Croatia yesterday beat them by a similar score.  Depressing.

The US hasn't won a gold in water polo since 1904.  But last Olympics they surprised and won silver, and this year the squad was a favorite to medal once again.  They went through three games undefeated and looking strong before suddenly falling apart.  It's strange to see a whole team slide like that, but there you have it.

U.S. Men's Water Polo, Today at 2:40 pm

It's Tuesday, which means today's the day that I normally put out a new piece of my ongoing prose "webcomic" series Centurion Six.  Well, the good news is that I started working on Centurion Six again yesterday.  But the bad news is that I've not gotten far enough along to actually have anything to show you yet.  So look for an update next week, okay?

In the meantime, if you missed the U.S. Men's Water Polo team in their opening match at the Olympics, you missed a pretty good match.  You can see highlights here.  The team's next match is today at 2:40 pm EST, and I hope like heck that I have a chance to catch at least some of it--if not today then tonight.