Northeast Water Polo Conference Round-Up: MIT’s Bret Lathrope

Freshman Miller Geschke, one of the Engineers' core of talent. Photo Courtesy: MIT Athletics

Editor’s Note: a day after a 12-9 loss to the host Terriers at St. Francis Brooklyn College, MIT Head Coach Bret Lathrope spoke with Swimming World’s Michael Randazzo about his team freshmen-laden squad, the challenge of playing in the Terriers’ den, and the impact of proposed rule interpretations being discussed by the NCAA Rules Committee and Bob Corb, NCAA Water Polo National Coordinator of Officials.

– With Miller Geschke leads a strong freshman class, polo appears to be on the upswing at MIT.

We have two starters who are freshman. Miller, he’s a Bay Area kid, and Kyle Sandell, another recruit from the Bay Area—they’re both from the same town and live a block away from each other. That’s two starters who came in and immediately had an impact on our team.

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We have another kid, John Steele, who is a Connecticut kid, who will get significant minutes. It’s great to have a young core that is at the forefront of our team.

Other than that our team is sophomores and juniors—we’re really young. It’s great to have kids like that come in from good, strong programs. Miller played club at Stanford, which is one of the best clubs in the U.S. He made the Junior Olympic final and was a starter for that team.

Getting kids like that to our program at MIT is huge.

– Is it correct that getting your prospects through the MIT admissions process is particularly fraught?

I can give the admissions department a list of prospects that I’ve been in contact with and a list that would benefit the team. Other than that they’ve got to meet the MIT standards if they want to get in. They go through the normal admissions process—they’re put in the same pile as every other kid who applies to MIT.

It’s rigorous and you’ve got to be willing to stick out the whole process.

– You got a taste of the Northeast Water Polo Conference play as an assistant to Dave Andriole last year but now you’re experiencing it as a head coach.

It’s tough but it’s also really fun. Every league game is a big one—it’s one of those leagues where it depends on who shows up that day to play. It’s awesome because it’s super competitive—we like to play with a chip on our shoulders that we’re the only Division III team in this Division I conference. It’s fun for us to be fighting above our weight class.

Bret Lathrope. Photo Courtesy: MIT Athletics

We don’t want to be in a league where it’s easy. We’ve got to compete and beat really good teams like Harvard, Princeton, Brown, St. Francis and Iona.

It’s good to stretch ourselves and see what we can do as a group.

– As a DIII school you do have a pathway to a championship.

There is a DIII Eastern Championship. It’s just one tournament that we play. We get to be in a tournament with some of the teams from the Mid-Atlantic [Water Polo Conference-West]—teams we wouldn’t otherwise see. Ultimately, we hope to face off against [Johns Hopkins], which is the best DIII team in the Mid-Atlantic. [That] helps our DIII ranking, so it’s good in that aspect as we can size ourselves up against other DII teams.

– Given that there are some strong DIII programs out on the West Coast, including Pomona-Pitzer and Whittier, is there a chance that a national DIII tournament will be created?

I would love to see it but it’s above my pay grade to get something like that done. If it did exist it would be huge because that’s most likely where we’ll see growth in the sport. Adding a DIII championship would encourage a lot of schools to add programs.

Hayden Niederreiter made a career-high 20 saves against St. Francis. Photo Courtesy: MIT Athletics

It’s tricky for us because I like being in this conference. I like the opportunity to compete against the Ivies, Selfishly, I wouldn’t want to separate DIII and DI. But in the long-term growth of the sport, it would be huge because we’ve maxed out at the moment for what DI programs will do for polo. Attacking it from the DIII level would be huge.

– What is it about playing in the Terrier’s home pool—located in a basement in Brooklyn?

It’s a super tough place to play in. It’s narrow and a little bit shallow on one end and it gets really loud in there, and when there’s a bunch of St. Francis fans there it’s a tough environment to play in. The Terriers always come out super hard and super aggressive—they’re a good, strong team. It’s tough to go in there.

You’re playing in an environment that’s different than what you’re used, [so] it exposes a lot of mistakes that you make.

– Bob Corb recently announced that he would like to lessen physical play, reward athleticism and standardize the rules for the sport in America. How will this effort impact your team’s play?

That’s an interesting questions because it gets into the USA versus what the rest of the world’s doing. In terms of our play, it’s tricky because everyone’s grown up playing under a certain set of rules, then you get to college and it’s completely different. It forces guys to learn a lot of new things, which is somewhat beneficial for us. And it forces everyone to play way better defense, which a lot of players haven’t learned. If you haven’t learned to play defense at a very young age then it becomes very hard to learn once you’re 18, 19 or 20 and you’ve had these habits for however many years you’ve been playing.

[These changes] will make the game more tactical and less physical. For the sport in general and the average viewer it might be better. But I like to think about US water polo as a whole, and going internationally is not beneficial for us. We play with a finesse game and then we go internationally as the U.S. it’s not going to bode well for us because the international game is way more physical.

Photo Courtesy: M. Randazzo

In terms of my personal water polo preference I prefer how the international game is called. They let it go more physical in center with quicker fouls on the perimeter. [But] with how USA Water Polo is going, driving becomes a benefit. It’s something we have to adapt to and earn how to play with.

What’s interesting is everyone’s in a transition period—including the refs. They’re figuring out what’s going on.

We’ll see how things shake out because it’s going to take a while until everyone is on the same page and things are consistent.

But it’s changing how the collegiate game is being played.

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