By 
The 2013 men’s collegiate water polo season began with some attention-grabbing scores, especially in the East where Harvard has already upset both Navy and St. Francis, George Washington has reasserted itself with victories over Bucknell and the Naval Academy, and plucky Mercyhurst continues its run of good fortune with a notable win over Bucknell. Not-so-buried in the tournament score lines of the past two weekends was the surprising performance of another emerging eastern squad.
On paper a 1-3 record may not typically pique much interest. But two one-goal losses to eastern stalwarts Bucknell and George Washington have suddenly shined a light on the young program at Notre Dame College.
The Falcons of South Euclid, Ohio, just 15 minutes from downtown Cleveland, are only in their second full season of NCAA-sanctioned competition and their fourth overall. That inexperience showed in 2012 at Navy where they went 1-4 in the early-season tournament while falling on average by 11 goals in their losses. Not so in 2013, where they cut that average differential to five in their three losses, which included an anomalous 18-4 defeat by Fordham (the Falcons’ third match in six hours).
How to account for such a turn of fate? Hard work and selective recruiting, according to men’s and women’s head coach Matt Kittle. The 2013 Falcons feature three Ohioans, a point of emphasis for the proud Buckeye-state native who grew up just 10 minutes from the NDC campus. Holding steady at around 300 high school water polo athletes, Ohio is poised for some growth with an influx of new clubs and more interest in competing across state lines, including the state’s first qualifiers for the gigantic Junior Olympics tournament in Orange County this past summer.
Despite Kittle’s admirable focus on athletes from his state (“I want to represent Ohio,” he says), the relatively small pool of talent makes for challenging recruiting. Even more important than correct heritage is matching the needs of the school.
“Ours are not the biggest names from Ohio, but the best fit for the program.”
That means having a genuine interest in academics, particularly in the majors featured at the college: business, nursing, health care administration (the school is tightly linked to the world renowned Cleveland Clinic). And it applies even more to out-of-state recruits.
“The ones from a distance are very serious about school.”
And what a distance: Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, California, Florida, Texas and Michigan dot the 2013 roster. It’s a point of pride for Kittle who not only takes advantage of the talent coming from some of the great centers of water polo in the world, but significantly increases the diversity of a student body traditionally drawn from close quarters.
“Yeah, seeing guys with their shirts off riding longboards or speaking Croatian on campus can be kind of new for a lot of students.”
And that kind of deviation from the norm has to be managed, says Kittle, who is in constant communications with the athletic director and school’s president to reassure them of his commitment to build a program in line with Notre Dame’s mission. The results have been good so far, not only with the varied backgrounds of the new athletes, but with their raw numbers.
As with other non-Division I schools, one of the common refrains of water polo coaches is that their programs help simply increase enrollment at their schools, something unheard of at big universities. For those like Notre Dame or Monmouth College in Illinois, two of the more recently created varsity water polo programs, they are integral to their schools’ efforts to attract more applicants.
All of which works well for a college on the rise. But more important to Kittle is that it’s brought him new talent, including Jonathan Cubillios from Miami, and Vanja Kopilas from Croatia via UCLA and Queens College. The two have led the team in scoring early in the season and will now attract the attention both of CWPA opponents, and several newly scheduled California foes.
A successful fundraising effort has allowed the Falcons to enter the Gary Troyer Tournament in Pomona the weekend of October 4 where they will meet Fresno Pacific, Caltech, Occidental and Claremont-McKenna during their first ever foray to the West.
The Falcons have had a long break before their next matches at the end of September and Kittle has used the time wisely, taking his team to play at the Ohio Cup Tournament on September 14, an important opportunity to spread the word about his up and coming program among local coaches and athletes. They next take on Washington and Jefferson in Pennsylvania on September 28.
