By Aimee Berg

When George Floyd was arrested and killed for allegedly trying to use a counterfeit bill in late May, Genai Kerr was watching the news 1,600 miles away in California.
 
"I was in the hospital with my newborn son," he said, "and all I could think about was not wanting to raise another child in the system that I had gone through."
 
Kerr—one of the first two Black men to represent the U.S. in Olympic water polo—vividly remembers one of the most respected and successful coaches in the world telling him to cut his dreadlocks before the 2004 Athens Games so he would look "like a sportsman… not Bob Marley."
 
The 6-foot-8 goalie remembers in college hearing the N-word many times from opponents, even teammates. At his final game in 2010 in Europe, he remembers fans yelling: "Kobe! Kobe!" or "Obama!" whenever he made a great play since Kobe Bryant and Barack Obama were the only successful Black people fans could think of.
 
As protests over police brutality grew worldwide, Kerr started thinking about how he could affect long-lasting change.
 
USA Water Polo was thinking about it, too.
 
So was Lauren Indart of the Stanford women's water polo team.
 
And so were Ginika and June Akpata, who play at New York University and University of the Pacific, respectively.
 
In May, the Akpata sisters formally incorporated a fledgling nonprofit called 6on5.org. It lets people donate used water polo and swimming equipment, after which the sisters refurbish items by hand in their family's basement in Connecticut, and then redistribute items to players who might not be able to afford expensive suits, balls, caps, or goggles.
 
Meanwhile, Indart and her Stanford teammates initiated "Swim for Diversity," which took place Sept. 26 and encouraged people to do something active related to the number 846, which stands for 8 minutes and 46 seconds—the time Floyd was pinned under the knee of a Minneapolis cop. Participants were asked to gather donations for groups that promote racial diversity within aquatic sports. More than 1,000 people in 12 states and three countries raised over $27,000 for nine organizations. Indart hopes to make it a recurring event.
 
Meanwhile, Kerr and fellow 2004 U.S. Olympian, Dr. Omar Amr, started The Alliance for Diversity and Equity in Water Polo—a permanent support network and education platform that goes by the motto "Do Better." They assembled a high-powered, multi-generational board that Kerr said is being led by Chelsea Johnson, a law student, former Princeton 2-meter player, and the younger sister of Gold medal-winning 2016 U.S. Olympic goalie Ashleigh Johnson.
 
But the most structured effort to date began when USA Water Polo's board and staff unanimously agreed that "racial iniquity exists in our sport, and we have a moral obligation to act," according to CEO Christopher Ramsey in a letter to SkipShot readers this summer.
 
On June 16, USA Water Polo tapped four-time Olympic medalist Brenda Villa and its Chief High Performance Officer John Abdou to co-chair a racial equity and reform task force. The aim was four-fold: Ensure zero tolerance for bias, provide educational curricula to promote fairness, increase access for communities of color, and expand resources to promote tolerance.
 
It wasn't, however, USA Water Polo's first attempt at broadening its membership, 27% percent of whom last year identified as non-white. In late 2019, the Board created a committee for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Villa was on it, she said, but three months later, the COVID-19 pandemic stalled everything. "There wasn't much traction," Villa added.
 
Spurred anew by world events, the task force has 18 months to report back with recommendations.
 
And even with another spate of COVID-related lockdowns, Abdou said "we're moving faster than I thought we would."
 
On July 16, the full task force was named. It includes 13 people—the majority of whom are people of color. Two are employed by the national governing body; the rest are volunteers. All have ties to water polo, as a coach, player, referee, or parent.
 
By August, a Zero Tolerance policy was put into effect. Gone was the one-sentence anti-discrimination directive in USA Water Polo's "Rules Governing Conduct." In its place is a five-paragraph prohibition against discrimination, harassment, or abusive conduct on the basis of "protected characteristics" such as race, color, ancestry, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation—even if no harm was intended. The clause also explicitly lays out the forms of disparagement that will not be tolerated, including social media, nicknames, jokes, drawings, and more.
 
Next up for the task force, Villa said, will be "a look at our grievance policy to make sure our membership feels comfortable and safe enough to report it. If something happens, you should tell us. And how do you tell us? We're taking a deeper dive into that to make sure it's clearer."
 
On Sept. 29, the task force announced a new fund so USA Water Polo donors can specifically earmark their contributions to support diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Within two months this fund had already attracted 56 unique donors—more than half of them first-time donors to USA Water Polo. "This helps people find a new way to identify with the organization," Abdou said.
 
Now the task force is working on education. "We want to make sure that from top to bottom, everyone has a baseline for what we mean when there's zero tolerance," Villa said. "What we mean when micro-aggressions happen. How do we stop those? How do we make sure we're aware? We're in the process of creating a resource training kit that every board member, staff member, and registered member will go though. To be able to fully commit to our code of conduct, everyone has to know: 'This is right' and 'this is wrong.' Not that they don't already, but this is the baseline. This is what we expect membership to know."
 
The final piece is "Access and Resources," which go hand in hand. What happens with this element depends on the findings of the research subgroup, led by Yale player Mariko Rooks, Harvard water polo coach Ted Minnis, and Brown University coach Felix Mercado.
 
"It's obvious that membership data is incomplete and a little shallow," Abdou said. The most reliable numbers showing membership according to race only reaches back three years—which is not long to track progress or change in the makeup of USA Water Polo's leadership or members. So, Abdou said one facet the research group is investigating is "how to collect this data, and what is meaningful. Also, to really give people an opportunity to identify themselves properly within the organization."
 
Rooks added via email that there are three main research goals. The first is to assess the state of USA Water Polo nationally with regard to race and other categories of marginalization and discrimination. "Who is representeds? Who are we missing?" she asked. To that end, the group is reorganizing existing U.S. water polo data and revamping questions on the membership survey. The second research goal is finding out, "What can we do better? What is our constituency asking for that maybe doesn't exist, and how can we make sure their voices are heard?" Rooks noted. The research subgroup hopes to quantify everything through a spring 2021 survey and assess it qualitatively in town hall meetings, focus groups, and interviews through which people can confidentially discuss their experiences in water polo—and in USA Water Polo specifically. Third, it wants to remodel existing initiatives such as the decade-old Shieldy reduced-cost membership program for students who qualify for the federal free/reduced lunch program and propose new ideas for programming, structure, and outreach based on gathered data.
 
Water polo players from Yale, Harvard, and Brown are helping Rooks, Minnis, and Mercado achieve these goals. Depending on their relevant skills, the Ivy League students will sign up to help with data analysis, questionnaire design, or interviewing, depending on the phase of research the task force is focused on during any given cycle.
 
A year from now, when all this work comes together, Abdou said, "I think the hurdle for true change is that it has to be really integrated into the day-to-day work. I want that to be authentic. Where we're working on as a national governing sports body trickles into our clubs, our colleges, and into the infrastructure of the sport. And within that infrastructure, if more people are viewing things from a more equitable lens, that's where I think we'll start seeing change. But that's a massive sea change that has to go across the country, and that will take some time."
 
Right now, Abdou added, "When people ask, 'Why is water polo a homogenous sport?' It's not hard to reverse engineer why that is."
 
"Across all non-traditional sports in the U.S., I believe inequity in youth sports is a major issue," he said. "If you're a skier, swimmer, lacrosse player—anyone in non-traditional sports—their nature has essentially evolved into a pay-to-play model. And this is even more pronounced in aquatic sports since 54 percent of Americans"—according to a 2014 American Red Cross water safety poll—"don't know how to swim. Within that, the number of people of color is incredibly disproportionate. And if you look at drowning statistics, a disproportionate number of victims are people of color. It also tends to be heavily male."
 
Even if you create access to water polo, Abdou said, "not a lot of people know how to swim, and once you do learn how to swim, here's this non-traditional sport that's not offered at your high school or your community pool—so how do you find it? And so, here we are."
 
Asked if he or Villa used any other organization as a model for their plans, Abdou said, "I wouldn't single out any one national governing sports body as doing a great job of [solving] this."
 
The bottom line, Villa said, is "we want to make USA Water Polo inclusive. We want to shift the culture so that anyone can come and feel like they belong. Racial equity is the root if it, right? But it's not just one thing. It's, 'How do we make our sport inclusive so we invite diversity?'"
 
Or, as "Brenda says all the time," according to Abdou, "our goal is to have water polo players bring their whole selves—their entire identities—to the pool, meaning they're not hiding. If they can do that, that's a win."

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2020 issue of SkipShot Magazine

If you'd like to support the USA Water Polo Racial Equity & Reform Task Force, email equitytf@usawaterpolo.org