La Salle women’s water polo readies to represent the East Coast game as postseason play begins

There are only 34 NCAA Division I women’s water polo programs in the nation.

And one of them is right here in Philly — La Salle.

The Explorers recently punched their ticket to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship for the third consecutive year after defeating crosstown rival Villanova on the final weekend of the regular season. Now, La Salle is the No. 6 seed in the upcoming MAAC Championship, hosted by Marist in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. on April 28-30.

The sport of water polo has traditionally been dominated by West Coast programs. Stanford, UCLA, and USC are the only three universities to have won a women’s water polo championship since the NCAA started sponsoring the sport in 2001. No school from outside California has ever surpassed third place in the NCAA women’s tournament.

Water polo is a relatively young program at La Salle, as it was just named a varsity sport in 2016. The Explorers made the MAAC championships for the first time in 2021, and repeated in 2022. This year, the Explorers’ qualification for playoffs came down to the very last weekend of the regular season. To secure a berth, La Salle needed to defeat a Villanova team that beat them 9-8 earlier in the season.

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“For an East Coast program to be successful, they’re gonna have to work twice or three times as hard to make that happen,” La Salle’s head coach James Wolff said. “In the summertime, there’s not as much club water polo taking place on the East Coast [as] there is on the West Coast. So in the West Coast, in a 30-mile radius, you might have 15 to 20 clubs, versus in the northeast area, there are only six to seven clubs from [here at La Salle] to Virginia.”

There are players, like senior goalkeeper Emma Gurasich and senior attacker Shanna Zuanich, who grew up playing in California, but came to play water polo on the East Coast in college. They’ve both noticed differences in the style of play at La Salle than what they grew up playing.

“I think it’s a little bit more swim-heavy, I would say. I noticed that we go up and down a lot more, and I think maybe that has to do with different reffing styles. I know swimming is huge on the East Coast, and maybe that’s got something to do with it,” Gurasich said. “Freshman year, it definitely took some getting used to. Plus the shallow-deep pools that they have out here, I’ve never had to play in one of those before in California, so that was definitely, as a goalie, a huge, huge adjustment.”

The growth of water polo in the region has been helped by the fact that water polo is an officially sponsored sport in Pennsylvania high schools, giving local youth an avenue to try out the sport. That also provides La Salle a local pool of talent to tap into — six members of the team hail from Pennsylvania. Graduate student Madelyn Koerper and freshman Paige Mitchell both played high school water polo for North Penn, a state championship-caliber program.

“There’s always been a rich history of water polo in the state,” Wolff said.

Wolff, who took over the young Explorer program following former coach Tom Hyham’s retirement last May, is particularly familiar with the growth of the game on the East Coast. Before La Salle, he coached club water polo at Greenwich Aquatics. In 2016, he made the first final of the USA Water Polo National Championship — the first ever for an East Coast program. He also has a background as an NCAA water polo referee, which he says offers a unique perspective as a coach.

“[Water polo is] very referee controlled. The referee has a lot of say on what goes on. So understanding our rules, which are pretty complicated compared to other sports, helps the student-athletes understand what the referee is looking for,” Wolff said.

“It’s really exciting to see how much [water polo is] growing as a sport too, because most of the girls that I know that play on this team started when they were in high school, and the girls I know in California started when they were a little bit younger, maybe elementary school, middle school. So it’s just really, really exciting to see more people get into it, and the growth of the sport,” Gurasich said. “It was nice to see how many people came out for our senior game, and I understand water polo is not the easiest sport to pick up for sure, but I hope it’s something that can change into a casually watched game.”