Welcome to AQTX

2022ThunderSpringInviteCollage

Success at AQTX Fest, Thunder Spring Invite, ODP

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Catching up after two of our busiest weeks.

AQTX Spring Festival

It’s over – the final AQTX TISCA West Region Spring Festival, and it went as well as it possibly could have. Thank you to everyone who volunteered to make it the smoothest one we’ve ever run. Because high school water polo will be run by the UIL in the fall, we as a club will no longer be able to host such an event, something we consider a good thing altogether. And don’t worry, we’ll be hosting other events in its place.

So thanks again for everyone’s hard work and congratulations to all our athletes who got to put their skills on display over the weekend. It’s very exciting for coaches to see your hard work paying off. Keep it up! You can find final results for the tournament on its events page.

Thunder Spring Invite Champs

Belated huge congrats to Tristan, William, Rudy, and Wes for taking home 1st prize medals for the Longhorn 14u and 12u teams competing in the silver bracket of the Thunder Spring Invite. Their teams went undefeated over the weekend. And as a reward, as Coach Tom and I mentioned to the teams, we won’t be entering any silver brackets in the foreseeable future! A great result and congratulations to our four players and our friends from Longhorn. Final results are here.

ODP National Championships

Speaking of Tristan, he and his Southwest Zone teammates returned from Northern California after beating the Midwest Zone to earn 13th place in the program’s national championship tournament. In their first game they fell just one goal short of the Pacific Zone Blue team from Northern California.

Kendall will finish her spring break in NorCal for the girls’ championship. She and her Southwest Zone Youth team will take on the Central (CA) Zone on Saturday, March 19. Best of luck to her and her teammates, and congratulation to Tristan on a great ODP season.

The next ODP season will begin in September and we will be pushing our athletes to try out more than we have in the past. You can keep tabs of what’s going on with the program via USA Water Polo’s ODP page.

Junior Olympics Interest

We’ve gotten feedback from a lot of you but want more! Are you interested in playing at Junior Olympics this summer? We will share a google form for you to fill out in our GroupMe (contact Coach James if you need the link to our GroupMe).

You can read more about the summer schedule via our Southwest Zone JOs Qualifier event page. With our friends from Longhorn our plan is to attempt to qualify all our boys’ teams for Session 1 in California. We are still getting feedback from the families of our girls about competing in California versus playing in Session 3 in North Texas. But if you’re planning on playing on one of our boys’ rosters (and you should!) then you should know we plan on qualifying for a trip to California. If any of our teams don’t qualify for CA we will play in Session 3 in North Texas for certain.

Alamo Classic Roster Call

All of our middle school and younger athletes are encouraged to commit to playing a the Alamo Classic in San Antonio on April 2-3. We’ll be working with Longhorn on rosters. If we have enough to do so we’ll happily create separate rosters for AQTX and Longhorn. But if not we’ll combine as we often do. Because it’s high school season the age groups are determined by school grade. So, 8th grade and under, 6th grade and under, 4th grade and under. Let’s go!

Welcome Newcomers

We have an influx of new members as the high school season has arrived and are very pleased to have them. To all of you who joined recently, welcome to AquaTex Waterpolo. Take a moment to read our Welcome page so you know what next steps are. Most importantly, all AquaTex athletes must be both registered with the club and have a current membership with USA Water Polo. The minimum level of membership that will cover your athlete is “Bronze,” although there is also a 2-week trial membership. Families must register with USA Water Polo directly. We as a club cannot register your athlete, unlike with USSwimming.

Thanks again for joining us!

#BeYourBest

2021WTTS18uBronze

Bronze Medalists at WTTS, Sunday Middle School Scrimmage, Parent Meeting on Calendar

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AquaTexans Earn Bronze at WTTS

The Welcome to Texas Shootout ended with big success for AquaTex athletes and the Longhorn teams for which they played. Our 14u mixed and 18u boys (coed) teams each finished third with wins over Mavericks, Viper Pigeon and CFWPC, and very close losses to Thunder and Pegasus, some of our best results ever. Read all the scores here.

Aaron, Declan, and Kendall all were big contributors to the 18u success, including an in-your-face moment when Aaron put away his penalty shot after an opposing coach let him and everyone in the facility know he wasn’t going to succeed (no vertical lunges for Aaron!). Both Kendall and Declan showed that they could play up against these talented opponents and – most importantly? – displayed some serious defensive skills (#proudcoach). Oh, and Aaron also anchored the 14u team because he felt it was important to play eight games instead of four.

Needless to say, it was a great weekend for our athletes and their Longhorn friends, most of whom were on our Junior Olympics rosters. Congratulations to all of them, and a huge shout out to parents who went to support their efforts.

12u/14u Scrimmage on Sunday

Longhorn will be bringing the crew to Micki this Sunday the 12th for a local game day scrimmage. The pool will open at 8:30 for warmup followed by an hour or more of scrimmaging for our youngest athletes (Swim2Score will scrimmage separately). This is a chance for all our newcomers to hop in, cap up, and play in a competitive setting maybe for the first time. It is most definitely a chance to learn so all AQTX middle schoolers are expected to attend. And we’ll try to break out the clocks I bought right as the pandemic was beginning, so high schoolers can show up and run them.

High school practice will still begin at 10:00 AM and will also likely include a lot of controlled scrimmaging.

Finally, we invite our Swim2Score athletes and anyone 11 and under from Longhorn to play some splashball beginning at 10:30 or so, after a short warmup.

Parent Meeting

Now that summer is over it’s time for parents and coaches to convene. We will meet via Zoom on Tuesday, September 14 at 7:00 PM. Families will be sent a link or two (in case we go over 40 minutes) to the conference in the coming days.

We will cover issues such as the fall schedule, which tournaments we are focusing on attending, our partnership with Longhorn, plans for growth, getting to know our coaches, and more about the culture we’re trying to build with AquaTex Waterpolo. If you have any subjects you think should be covered let me know as soon as possible, and be on the look out for that email invitation to Zoom. It’s an important time for our club so the maximum possible attendance is appreciated, whether new to the club or not.

Fall Schedule

Tournaments

Take a moment to look at our Calendar and select only “USA Water Polo – Southwest Water Polo.” You’ll see the tournament schedule for the next few months. After a discussion with Longhorn we plan to enter teams at the Viper Pigeon Octopolofest, Texas Challenge Cup, and the Cowtown tournament traditionally held in December (not yet on the USAWP calendar). AQTX families will be getting a link to an updated commitment spreadsheet so we can plan our travel rosters. We urge our families to set aside time for these important events as we attempt to increase the amount and quality of competition in which we participate.

Olympic Development Program

And we strongly encourage our athletes to participate in USA Water Polo’s Olympic Development Program. The first camp is at UT on Sunday, September 19 and you can register here via your (new) USAWP profile. Newcomers can consult this for more information about the program, or contact AquaTex families that have participated in past years. And even though I stepped down as head coach I am still involved with the program and can answer a lot of questions. It’s a great way to accelerate your learning of the game and potentially travel with teams of fellow Texans to compete against others from throughout the US.

Practice Cancellations

Consult the calendar as we make changes to adapt to swim meets and other stuff at Micki, and follow us on social media as we increase the amount of info we share that way. And if you don’t know our GroupMe link let me know so we can add you.

All practices are cancelled the weekend of September 25-26 due to an age-group swim meet. We may have a game day at UT on Sunday the 26th.

Welcome!

We’re very pleased to welcome a new 12u athlete, Rudy, to the club. He joins Siri and Gavin (14u), who had some great trial practices and we hope they’ll join us permanently. For them an any other family new to our program, several of the questions you may have about what comes next are here. Welcome to all of you.

Good Luck, Coach Matthew

Coach Matt has been missing recently for a good reason. He’s back home in the Chicago-land area and will be competing in Madison at the Ironman Wisconsin on Sunday, the 12th. We wish him the best of luck, hope he wins, and then rushes back to Austin. Have a great time, and #BeYourBest Smiley!

See you on the deck,

James