{"id":276325,"date":"2017-09-02T12:30:32","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T19:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=276325"},"modified":"2017-09-02T14:25:11","modified_gmt":"2017-09-02T21:25:11","slug":"catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching up with Brown Water Polo’s Felix Mercado"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Randazzo, Swimming World Contributor<\/em><\/p>\n

Embarking on his 11th season at Brown, where he coaches both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s water polo teams, Felix Mercado<\/strong> has a lot to be thankful for. Since arriving in Providence, the Florida native has transformed a one-time doormat into one of the East\u2019s most consistent winners.<\/p>\n

\"brown\"<\/p>\n

Selected by his peers as the inaugural honoree of Coach of the Year<\/a> for the new Northeast Water Polo Conference<\/a> (NWPC), Mercado has an impressive body of work accomplished at one of the country\u2019s premier academic institutions. His coaching resume includes the biggest prize in the East: a berth in the NCAA Men\u2019s Water Polo Tournament, which his Brown squad captured<\/a> in 2014 with a 7-6 decision over Ivy rival Princeton, ending a 24-year drought.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s coached his share of All-Americans, including Henry Fox<\/strong>, Kent Holland<\/strong>, Will Klein<\/strong> and Svetozar Stefanovic<\/strong>. Mercado has also absorbed disappointment, including a loss to Princeton in the first round of the 2012 Men\u2019s Collegiate Water Polo Association Championship that derailed what promised to be one of the greatest season in Bears\u2019 history.<\/p>\n

On the eve of the Bruno Classic<\/a>, Brown\u2019s expanding tournament that has become the signature event on the opening weekend for East Coast men\u2019s water polo, Mercado spoke to Swimming World<\/em> about his tenure as a coach at one of America\u2019s greatest academic institutions, Harvard\u2019s historic run to the 2016 NCAA Final Four, expectations for the Bears given the loss of five starters from last year\u2019s regular season NWPC champs and how the CWPA split has made the multiple NCAA berths that much more accessible to Eastern schools.<\/p>\n

After more than a decade at Brown, does it surprise you that your coaching career has played out at an institution renown for it\u2019s academics?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t be at a better educational institution that represents the type of person I am. That\u2019s the best part of coaching at Brown, a school that if I was smart enough I probably would have wanted to attend.<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s social reputation is a lot like the person I am. That makes my job easier because translating to recruits the Brown experience is truly what I believe in. Without a doubt this is my dream job.<\/p>\n

How important was being awarded the first Coach of the Year award in NWPC history?<\/strong><\/p>\n

First and foremost, the fact that your peers feel you\u2019re worthy of such an accomplishment is an honor because our conference has some pretty damn good coaches that do a great job. Without a doubt I\u2019d trade a million coach of the year awards for a conference championship\u2026 and we were so close last year.<\/p>\n

After the season was over I sat back and realized that we had a great season and we pretty much did great things. The fact that your peers felt like you deserved it makes it even more special.<\/p>\n

Harvard beat Brown 11-7<\/a> in the NWPC title match, then went on an incredible run. 2016 truly seemed to be the Crimson\u2019s year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The crazy thing is I saw that team grow. That senior crop especially\u2014before they arrived we never lost to Harvard. The moment that class arrived as freshmen is when we started trading wins.<\/p>\n

They had a great run\u2014when you beat<\/a> Princeton at Princeton\u2026it was magical to watch the job that Teddy did. A lot of the guys on that team I recruited and respect tremendously.<\/p>\n

Moving forward, when a team gets hot it\u2019s almost like the NCAA basketball tournament: anything can happen. It was almost better that they handled us the way that they did than with us losing a heartbreaker because it was able to give me an opportunity to really sit back and be like: \u201cMan those guys had a great run. What a great team.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a fan of the East Coast first and foremost, so I wanted them to beat UC Davis\u2014there\u2019s no question that inspires me as a coach. You don\u2019t need to be the hands-on favorite every year to win it. You just have to peak at the right time. You can be the best team going into the championship and can fall short because of a bad quarter or one of your players got three kick-outs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s how your team responds to that type of adversity\u2014and Harvard showed it.<\/p>\n

I hated losing, but I respect Teddy and the job he\u2019s done there.<\/p>\n

How did an expended Bruno Classic with Harvard come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The level of interest of teams that wanted to play\u2014I couldn\u2019t turn anyone away. There\u2019s no way I could have fit all these games in at Brown without making it really difficult for our pool staff and the officials.<\/p>\n

Harvard and MIT were happy to accept some of these games because they didn\u2019t have to travel down to us.<\/p>\n

This is not going to happen every year but it\u2019s something we will consider depending on how many teams are interested, but Harvard is a great host and it made scheduling a lot easier.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re playing McKendree in their first ever match as an NCAA varsity program. Any advice that you might offer Ryan Hall, their head coach?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The crazy thing is we were Wagner\u2019s first official game last year! We wanted to be McKendree\u2019s first game this year. I\u2019m honored that we can inaugurate them into their first varsity season. I\u2019m very excited about that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say: have a plan and stick to it. And Wagner showed it. We played them twice last year. The progress they made in two weeks was crazy. I wish we could play McKendree later in the season to see how they\u2019ve improved.<\/p>\n

My goal is to get Austin College<\/a> out here next year.<\/p>\n

\"mercado-group-sept17\"

Photo Courtesy: Brown Athletics<\/p><\/div>\n

What is it about Brown, Harvard and Princeton that you are able to attract great talent from all over the world?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question it\u2019s not just us. All water polo in the East has gotten better; athletes are starting to make the decision [that] they want to play and they want to get a great education.<\/p>\n

Whether it’s the three Ivies, whether it\u2019s Bucknell or Johns Hopkins\u2014or even the New York schools\u2014the East Coast is just getting better players all around. Obviously the Ivies have won the last three years, though Bucknell did win their conference championship last year and went to NCAAs.<\/p>\n

Give credit to the coaches and the coaching staffs. The coaching in both conferences is impressive and I think that has a lot to do with our success.<\/p>\n

You have a reputation of attracting local talent. Do you think the caliber of players being developed in the East has improved?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot better athletes that are maybe moving away from swimming or wanting to do more water polo on the East Coast because usually swimming is the one that takes those great aquatic athletes.<\/p>\n

Greenwich [Aquatics]<\/a> has done a good job, Chelsea Piers<\/a> has done a good job, the programs in Pennsylvania have done a good job, the Kingfish<\/a>, and all those others, the Naval Aquatics<\/a> programs, they\u2019ve all done a good job of developing athletes.<\/p>\n

The one thing they lack is the number of games under their belts, but sometimes that\u2019s a plus\u2014sometimes that means that they have more potential or they have yet to peak.<\/p>\n

What does the new season look like for Brown? You\u2019ve lost some talent but I suspect this is not a rebuilding year for the Bears.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We lost five starters and those players were part of a great run. The last three years we\u2019ve been the number one seed going into the championships, and we won a championship with that group.<\/p>\n

\"kirchberg-brown-sep17\"

Senior Tyler Kirchberg, Brown’s leading scorer in 2016. Photo Courtesy: David Silverman Photography<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m hoping that our young guys are ready to step up. It\u2019s obvious to everyone that we lost five starters and one of them was the goalie, which is such an important position, and everyone is just going to sit back and watch us and see how everything plays out. But if there\u2019s one thing I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve done in a while is play with no pressure. I think everyone will be curious how we react to that.<\/p>\n

What makes coaching fun is facing different challenges. Our goal this year is no different from last year, we want to win a championship just like everyone else. We have a shot because we do have good players on our roster. If anything, we might not have the best two or three players in the pool but we hope that our four, five, six, seven, eight, nine guys down the line are going to be as good or better than everyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Our approach the next two weekends at the two big tournaments is we’re playing ten games in two weeks, we are playing six games at our home tournament. That\u2019s a lot of games, but it\u2019s an opportunity for every one of these guys to get a chance to play. If we go 0 and 6 or 6 and 0 it\u2019s not going to change our mindset. What we\u2019re trying to do is win in November.<\/p>\n

A hallmark of any successful program is the elusive \u201cwinning mentality.\u201d Given the influx of new players, do you need to rebuild this attitude or is this an inherent part of the Brown culture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fact that our guys, even the guys that didn\u2019t play last year, saw it happen, I think it\u2019s something that they expect. They expect to compete. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re intimidated by anything. If we\u2019re going to get beat it\u2019s because the other team was better than we were, not because we didn\u2019t show up or gave up.<\/p>\n

But yeah, the winning mentality, I think it\u2019s a culture thing. It\u2019s something that you have to establish, but you hopefully don\u2019t have to repeat every year and don\u2019t have to tell them to do it, that they know and they walk onto this pool deck knowing what they represent. Someone is always going to be there to remind them of their wins and losses that could have gone either way to keep us prepared for anything.<\/p>\n

As you retool for a new season, do you see that a quicker, counter-attacking style of play will be part of the Brown repertoire?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d say so but I think that we\u2019re balanced. Hudson Rawlings<\/strong> isn\u2019t your typical center\u2014he\u2019s 6-0. But we do have Travis Bouscaren<\/strong> who\u2019s 6-8. Rico Burke<\/strong>, our center defender, is 6-5. Jack Wilson<\/strong> is a 6-5 center defender. So we do have some size.<\/p>\n

\"burke

Senior Rico Burke. Photo Courtesy: David Silverman Photography<\/p><\/div>\n

More than anything else it comes down to effort. Obviously it would be a detriment to our team if everybody out there was under 6 feet tall, but you can afford to have smaller guys out there if they can make up for any mismatches that teams might try to exploit. You can be a 6-5 player who\u2019s a horrible center defender. Or you can be a 5-10 athlete who\u2019s an excellent center defender. It just comes [down] to the mindset of the athlete. I\u2019ve seen some big guys play small. And I\u2019ve seen some small guys play big.<\/p>\n

I question looking at height as the first barometer of what can be successful, I think you play the best players.<\/p>\n

Before breaking into the NWPC and the MAWPC, the CWPA Championship<\/a> was a fantastic festival of all the teams from the East. Now it\u2019s two relatively small tournaments that lack the suspense of what was known as the Easterns. Do you miss this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll say this: comparing Easterns, the way it was before, to the championships now, is almost like comparing an NCAA championship environment to a conference championship.<\/p>\n

The biggest issue for me, and it\u2019s become apparent now that we\u2019ve gone through this year, is that teams would show up at Easterns having no idea about how another team plays.<\/p>\n

When we lost to Johns Hopkins two years ago, we faced a team that we played in January. We didn\u2019t have a chance to see them. Watching film is great [but] there\u2019s nothing better than facing each other.<\/p>\n

Winning an Easterns championship the way it was in years\u2019 past was more difficult than it is now. Now you\u2019re going in knowing your opponent. We\u2019re playing Princeton and Harvard twice. We\u2019ve always played St. Francis twice. If you like the NCAA tournament as your championship, then Easterns was that. But two teams that have never seen each other playing in a championship game\u2026 even when we beat Princeton [in 2014] it was the only time we played them that year.<\/p>\n

While now, losing to Harvard, we saw them two previous times and we knew exactly what they were doing. For me, that\u2019s more of what a conference championship should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Randazzo, Swimming World Contributor Embarking on his 11th season at Brown, where he coaches both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s water polo teams, Felix Mercado has a lot to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4875,"featured_media":276336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[63323,42886,63407,63324,63436,63441,63445,63437,60192,63329,63330,61159,63443,60895,63439,60622,63442,63444,63438],"class_list":["post-276325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-water-polo","tag-brown-water-polo","tag-cwpa","tag-felix-mercado","tag-harvard-water-polo","tag-henry-fox","tag-hudson-rawlings","tag-jack-wilson","tag-kent-holland","tag-michael-randazzo","tag-mid-atlantic-water-polo-conference","tag-northeast-water-polo-conference","tag-princeton-water-polo","tag-rico-burke","tag-st-francis-brooklyn","tag-svetozar-stefanovic","tag-ted-minnis","tag-travis-bouscaren","tag-tyler-kirchberg","tag-will-klein"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\nCatching up with Brown Water Polo's Felix Mercado - Swimming World<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Catching up with Brown Water Polo's Felix Mercado\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Michael Randazzo, Swimming World Contributor Embarking on his 11th season at Brown, where he coaches both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s water polo teams, Felix Mercado has a lot to\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Swimming World\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SwimmingWorld\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-09-02T19:30:32+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-09-02T21:25:11+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/mercado-sept17.jpg\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1500\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1000\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael Randazzo\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@swimmingworld\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@swimmingworld\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Randazzo\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Michael Randazzo\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/fb1d58ba008040c3ad837f46defed7bb\"},\"headline\":\"Catching up with Brown Water Polo’s Felix Mercado\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-09-02T19:30:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-09-02T21:25:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/\"},\"wordCount\":2257,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/mercado-sept17.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Brown Water Polo\",\"CWPA\",\"Felix Mercado\",\"Harvard Water Polo\",\"Henry Fox\",\"Hudson Rawlings\",\"Jack Wilson\",\"Kent Holland\",\"Michael Randazzo\",\"Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference\",\"Northeast Water Polo Conference\",\"Princeton Water Polo\",\"Rico Burke\",\"St. Francis Brooklyn\",\"Svetozar Stefanovic\",\"Ted Minnis\",\"Travis Bouscaren\",\"Tyler Kirchberg\",\"Will Klein\"],\"articleSection\":[\"-Home Slider\",\"Water Polo\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/catching-up-with-brown-water-polos-felix-mercado\/\",\"name\":\"Catching up with Brown Water Polo's Felix Mercado - 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