07.23.08
Posted in Water Polo at 12:37 PM by Jeff
If you remember, last year at the State Games of Oregon my water polo team, the Portland Masters, received the bronze medal. This year the end result was the same. Again some members of our club split off to make their own team and ended up winning the gold medal. While our two rosters remained somewhat similar to last year’s, our competition was very different. A team from Oregon State University who did not compete last year finished with the silver medal.
The one day tournament at the Multnomah Athletic Club proved to be a great experience. Water polo tournaments with good competition and good sportsmanship are quite fun. A side note about the MAC club is that their pool is pretty nice but their website looks like a fifth grader designed it.
The bronze medal game was a very interesting one. We were matched up against a team named Oregon Coaches, and as you can assume their team was made up of water polo coaches. During a game earlier that day we lost to the Oregon Coaches by a few goals. Would the outcome be a repeat of the earlier game?
For some reason we come out scoring in this game. After a short while were able to get a sizable lead in the score. Then in the fourth quarter with a commanding lead, I was put in to play another position (besides my usual position of goalkeeper). I held my own for a few minutes. Swimming up and down the pool as well as playing some offense and defense. Then after a quick steal by one of our players, our team had a fast break with only seconds left in the game. I swam as fast as I could down the right side of the pool. My teammate had the ball on the left side of the goal and quickly passed the ball to me. Later he said, “when I saw our goalie completely open I just had to pass him the ball”. I picked up the ball to take a shot…and the time ran out right before I could throw the ball into a mostly unguarded goal. I was less than a second away from scoring!
So, unlike last year, I did not get to score in the final game…but I was close. Pretty good for a goalie, if I do say so myself.
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10.24.07
Posted in Water Polo at 1:16 PM by Jeff
At the last practice for my water polo team, the Portland Masters, I got my butt kicked. Being the youngest guy on my team, I can usually rely on my fitness to make up for the decades of experience that my teammates have. When I am not in shape after 4 weeks of not swimming at all, like this particular time, it is bad! In my defense the Portland Masters are very very good. If you don’t remember we earned silver and bronze in the State Games of Oregon because we split into two different teams.
On the bright side, getting my butt kicked is a very good motivator. It goes without saying that I don’t want that to happen again. So, I have started practicing with another team and swimming again. At the next practice I will be ready!
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07.09.07
Posted in Water Polo at 4:26 PM by Jeff
This weekend my water polo team, the Portland Masters, participated in the State Games of Oregon. The State Games are twice yearly and include tournaments in many sports from Badminton to Basketball to Water Polo. Any Oregon resident that is not a professional athlete can compete. Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals are handed out to the winners of each sport. It’s actually a really cool event to participate in.
The level of competition is pretty good and most of the participants showed good sportsmanship.
The Water Polo competition took place in the Multnomah Athletic Club. While their web site is not the most visually pleasing, the actual facility is pretty nice. A side note is that the depth of their pool (pictured right) can be adjusted to be anywhere between one foot and nine feet deep. Oh the marvels of modern technology!
Months before the Games took place, it was suggested that we split our team into two teams. This was actually a good way to make the tournament more competitive. My part of the team ended up winning a bronze medal with a record of 3-2. The other part of our team ended up winning the silver medal with a record of 3-2. They beat us by one goal in a very close game, and went on to win the Silver medal.
The highlight of the Games for me came in the fourth quarter of the Bronze Medal game. We were winning by a good margin, so one of my teammates offered to play goalie and let me try another position. Normally I never leave the goal, but I figured I could at least try. The first play my team had the ball, I beat my defender down the pool and was yelling for the ball. Unfortunately, my teammate did not give me the ball and my defender caught up with me. So, I popped out to the side of the pool to get open. My teammate then passed me the ball. I turned to face the goal and saw my defender with his hand up and the goalie ready to make a save. Without hesitation I through the ball as hard as I could to the lower left hand corner of the goal. It went right under the goalie’s arm and into the goal. Instantly my teammates started cheering. After all it isn’t every day that you see a goalie score a goal.
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07.07.07
Posted in Water Polo, This Site at 1:40 PM by Jeff
After my graduation the IS department (previously OCIO and previous to that CTS) at University of Portland cut me off from being a web administrator on their server. You would expect them to delete my network account, however this put me in somewhat of a pickle.
During my time at UP, I started the Men’s Water Polo Club. In an effort to raise awareness and support for the club I created a web site. My site was hosted on the university’s server. It seemed as though every year I would completely remake the club’s web site from scratch; and every year the new version was better than the last.
When I first realized that my account was getting deleted I tried to find someone in the club who knew enough to maintain the site. Of course, no one volunteered. So, I dumbed down the site so that it could go on almost indefinitely without needing to be updated. See current site here.
Recently I had time to put up the full version of the UP Men’s Water Polo Site on my own server. So check it out if you have a minute. I started creating it when I was fairly new to PHP. The site uses PHP, CSS, Javascript, RSS, Flash, and graphics created by myself. The only usual thing about the site is that it does not have a back-end database. UP would not allow me access to a DB on their server and I did not have my own server running at the time.
I would be interested to know what you think about the site.
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06.04.07
Posted in Water Polo at 5:12 PM by Jeff
This last weekend was one of the most exciting weekends that I have had in a while. If you can’t guess by the title, it was a water polo tournament hosted by the UO Ducks (webfoot, get it). It was my first tournament with the Portland Masters water polo team. Most of the players are in their 30s to 50s and they still play great water polo. Don’t ask me what happened to their previous goalie…but I guess that he will not be invited to play anymore.
The tournament was played at Amazon Pool, a nice outdoor pool in Eugene, Oregon. I have played there before during my tenure with the University of Portland Men’s Water Polo Club. Sometimes it was cloudy. Sometimes it was rainy. However, until this weekend I had never played water polo outdoors in the sun. I even have the sunburn and speedo tan line to prove it.
We played five teams in the round robin style tournament, including University of Oregon. When most of our opponents see our team they say to themselves, “Those old guys look out of shape and we’ll probably kick their butts”. In fact someone from the UO squad was quoted as saying that “[the Portland Masters] could never put together a squad that could even touch our team”.
Well, I think we proved them wrong! After nice performances by yours truly and my team, we came out victorious. We won all five of our games.
My stats included stopping a few one-on-none fast breaks, making a few back-to-back blocks, getting one steal, earning one major foul, and blocking two shots with my head.
After the tournament one of my teammates was nice enough to point out that I have never been on a team that has won a tournament before. In fact, in my eight years of playing water polo, I have only had a winning record for one season (10-6 senior year of high school). I don’t even want to figure out my career win to loss ratio, because I’m afraid of how low it might actually be. But despite all the losses, I stuck with water polo. Man, I love this sport.
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