Water Polo Club Initial Reflection

(LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively)

Although I attended the water polo club for only one season, it was an amazing experience because this is the only activity that I shared with my close friend — Wangdrak. Because we are familiar with each other, we can work together closely.

Water polo is a sport that requires strong cooperation and communication in both practice and matches. Because we are beginners, we started with passing a ball continuously with a single hand to each other on land. We have to synchronize our movement to catch the ball on time. As we gradually move further apart from each other, it becomes much harder to keep the ball in air. We later found out that to do this more easily, we need to read each others body movement to analyze when he is going to throw the ball, what direction and what strength. In this way, we can get prepared to move in advance. After a few classes, we got into water. It is much harder as we now need to keep ourselves floating in the 2m-deep water while passing the ball. Since we need to keep balance in the water, the catcher may not be ready to catch the ball since he may be adjusting his position. So before I throw the ball, I need to check whether my partner is ready or not. Here, the importance of communication is illustrated. Since it is not convenient for us to say anything as there is a risk of chocking water, we can only communicate through hand gestures: one hand up means I am ready, while both hands underwater means I am not ready. This worked very well. In the following practices, we need some further cooperation as we were swimming while passing the ball and aim to shoot on a goal in the end. Because there are defenders, we need to be in good positions to dodge the defenders. As a result, we discussed strategies before every training.

All the training above cannot be done without working collaboratively and the communication between us. Later, we will be working with a bigger group of people when we joined the teams. I believe that the skill of cooperation would be more crucial.