Jamie Kolar - (Author)

In years past, teams from the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s Division III conference—a collection of ten schools from the East and Midwest divided over two brackets—had no shot at a national championship. The best that Connecticut College, Grove City, Penn State Behrend, Utica, and Washington &...

Fears regarding the spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus—now officially dubbed “2019 nCoV” or “Covid 19”—are proving nearly as potent as the disease itself. Those who have been gauging its growing impact can feel little surprise that the 2020 Asian Water Polo Championships, to have been...

In what may appear to be a long time coming, Swimming World’s previews of the six conferences that will send teams to the 2020 NCAA Women’s Water Polo Tournament in early May are now live. Following are links to our 2020 conference previews. Winners are predicted by the various preseason polls voted...

Even without the lauch last year of a national DIII championship for men and women, the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference would still be the nation’s most intriguing conference for water polo. A federation of academically excellent colleges that dot the California landscape, th...

As the 2020 women's water polo season enters week four of competition, prepare for rankings in the latest Collegiate Water Polo Association Top 25 varsity poll to be scrambled. This is because the Triton Invitational—hosted by UC San Diego—is the first major women's tournament of the season. 16 team...

PROVIDENCE, RI. If you have not seen Wagner’s Sofia Diaz Alvarez play, you are missing one of the region’s best water polo players. Now a sophomore for the liberal arts school on New York City's Staten Island, the native of Madrid, Spain has emerged as the top attacker and defender on a Seahawk squa...

With a 9-8 win over Spain last month in the final of the 34th LEN European Water Polo Championship, the Hungarian men not only captured gold in front of their countrymen in Budapest's Duna Aréna, they qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. [Hungarian Fans Ecstatic as Men Beat Spain 14-13 for 2020 Eu...

There’s one more shot to qualify for teams on the outside looking in of the 2020 Tokyo men’s water polo tournament. It will take place at the Zwemcentrum Rotterdam in the Netherlands second-largest city and one of the European Union’s economic centers. With possibly four spots available, as many as ...

PROVIDENCE, RI. The 2020 Bruno Women's Water Polo Classic last weekend was an opportunity to catch local teams in early season action at Brown's Kathryn Graham Aquatics Center, one of East's better facilities. Part of the tournament's draw was participation by Whittier and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, me...

PROVIDENCE, RI. Starting a collegiate water polo program from scratch presents numerous obstacles, and the path to success is by no means assured. Case in point: in 2016, La Salle launched men’s and women’s polo at the same time, and it took three years and a new coach for the Explorers to find thei...

PROVIDENCE, RI. The Siena women's water polo program has historically dwelled among the lower rungs of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). Picked seventh of the conference's nine schools in the 2020 coaches preseason poll—just ahead of a rebuilding St. Francis Brooklyn and newcomer (to po...

PROVIDENCE, RI. Saturday at the Kathryn Graham Aquatics Center on the Brown University campus was a day of firsts for women's NCAA varsity water polo. Long Island University, primarily known for its decades-long success in men's basketball as the Blackbirds, played its first-ever women's polo match....

The latest Collegiate Water Polo Association's Top-25 poll saw significant swings in both directions. The biggest move up was by San Jose State, which jumped five spots to #13 thanks to an upset of Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) rival Cal in a non-conference match. UC Irvine—which last we...

The abrupt resignation of Chris Radmonovic, last July from the Wagner men’s and women’s program, resulted in a seminal shift for the best water polo team in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). The Seahawks have won the past six conference crowns, and are favored to repeat in the 2020 pres...

When Indiana women's water polo, winless on its opening day, beat #11 Pacific last Sunday, it was not just another surprising early season result. The 13-5 victory, in which Tina Doherty collected three goals and the #20 Hoosiers pulled away in the fourth quarter, was the first-ever for Taylor Dodso...

The script for the 34th LEN European Water Polo Championship could not have been better for Hungary and its rabid fans; a tie match between the home team and Spain, and a gripping shootout decided on the last shot as the Hungarians won 14-13 to capture gold at Budapest’s Duna Aréna. After Gergo Zala...

In what may be a precursor of greater success at the 2020 Olympics, Spain has again pulled of a rare double feat in a top water polo tournament. With wins by its men and women at the semifinals of the 34th LEN European Water Polo Championship, starting later today the Spaniards will be in position f...

Play in the 2020 NCAA women's varsity started last week with were early season upsets. UCLA, Cal and Michigan lost and felt it in the CWPA Top 25 varsity rankings. A number of schools begin play this weekend, while others are in the midst of taxing non-conference schedules in preparation for confere...

Outside of the mighty Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF), the Golden Coast Conference has arguably the nation’s strongest women’s water polo teams. But the past three years, the GCC has been dominated solely by one team—Pacific—which since 2017 has 21 straight conference wins and three GCC ti...

A dramatic finish Wednesday to a men’s quarterfinal match at the 34th LEN European Water Polo Championships may signal the end of an unprecedented reign of success. When Spain’s Alvaro Granados Ortega beat Serbian goalie Branislav Mitrovic in a shootout, it gave the Spaniards a dramatic 10-9 win and...