Black Trailblazers In Water Polo Remember Their Journey: Past, Present & Future

By Aimee Berg
 
Deep within the SkipShot archives is a 1996 story examining water polo's color barrier. There have been breakthroughs since then, but the consensus is: too few. It was time to look again. So, in February, in a series of one-on-one phone interviews, six American trailblazers—from age 67 to 26—discussed what it was like to be some of the country's first black college water polo coaches, national team members, and Olympians. These are their words, condensed and edited lightly for clarity.
 
JERRY MOSS, 67, coached at Boston University ('87-'89), Boston College ('90-'92), M.I.T. ('94), and Wellesley ('16-'19) while teaching high school health and fitness at Concord-Carlisle about 15 miles outside of Boston.
 
When I was growing up in the '60s in Montclair, NJ, there was no "landscape of black water polo players" in the United States. All of my friends and I went to the Y to swim. But in high school, who went out for the swim team? Just me. So, I became accustomed to camaraderie with my white brothers and sisters.

I graduated high school in '72 and wanted to try out for college football, but I had a bad back and went out for crew. One day at Northeastern, during crew practice, I see this observation window, and it's a pool. I see a bunch of legs and hands grabbing. I said, "Hey man, what's that?" Water polo? I went, "Whoa, see ya later," and I tapped out of crew. And that was it! I fell in love. I had the swimming background, and I had the ball skills from playing baseball, football, and basketball. I was always treated fairly.

I was 6'-1", had a very strong shot, and was very aggressive in the water because I played all these other ball sports. So maybe— and I never put it together until now—that's why I never really got any crap. Because I knew how to play, I could hurt you, take the ball from you. I never really felt like a minority. It's only obvious to me when I look at photos.

The only problem that came up in college? I wasn't even there! The team went down to play at the New York AC. When they got there, they were turned back because we had two Jewish players. They said, "Dude, if you were there, we wouldn't have even gotten in the front door." That affected me because it was my team, but other than that I haven't played competitively since 1988.
During my playing time, my officiating time, and my coaching time, I never faced any type of racial anything. I've been very fortunate. I just never came across it. But I also haven't seen any growth. Then again, when I was coaching at B.C., B.U., M.I.T., or at Wellesley, I didn't really look at the big picture, the national picture.

I remember seeing one black brother playing in the 2004 Olympics, and I was very happy. It just surprised me that there's only one or two. There must be more good players out there. I'm kind of shocked I don't see more black people playing now. Because I thought it was a good thing.
 
CARLA GILMORE, 58, made the U.S. National Team before women's water polo was in the Pan Am Games, never mind the Olympics. She played club polo through her 50s and coached around San Diego where she also worked as a labor and delivery nurse for 20 years. She now manages an OB-GYN clinic. Her daughter, Georgia—the 2016 San Diego section player of the year—currently plays for UC Berkeley.
 
I started playing water polo in 1977 while in junior high school in Modesto, CA, because my swim coach, Brent Bohlender, wanted to start a team. We'd practice on weekends and shoot at banquet tables set on the side of the pool. I also played basketball and swam competitively.

I don't think I ever thought of race back then. I always felt like, "I'm in the human race" even though people wanted to know: Are you white or black? You can only be one or the other. But I'm biracial: white and African-American. In general, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I played center defense, and others didn't dominate me because, really, I was so strong.

After graduating from San Diego State in 1988, I played for the national team for a short time. Our team had quite a few people of color—no African-Americans, but Japanese, Mexican, Mexican-American, and the head coach, Sandy Nitta, is Asian.

In 1992, we went to a tournament in Puerto Rico. Seeing women from Jamaica, Brazil, and Puerto Rico—all these other women of color playing at a really high level. That was inspirational, seeing that it's not just a white sport. That was when I thought to myself, "Oh, I'm not the only one playing water polo." I fit in!

I have to say, I never really felt discrimination in water polo. I haven't. There was so much camaraderie in women's water polo. I felt like "this is my family."

It wasn't until I was playing masters water polo that people really recognized that I'm black. I felt like the referees could really see me and thought that maybe I played dirty or something. I didn't play dirty. I was just stronger than most. I'm 5'-10" and was strong all the way through my 40s for sure.

I also coached for many years, all ages, most successfully at Palomar College in San Diego. One year, on my 18-year-old men's team, the Miramar Jets, I had a player from the Middle East, one from Africa, a Mexican-American, a Vietnamese Hmong, even a white kid who was deaf. And then me—a black woman as coach. We weren't great, but I felt super-awesome about it! Aside from that men's' team, I haven't really coached a lot of people of color.

Of course, I'd like to see more black folks represented in the water. But I also feel like we need to have these women who have been around the game for so long get the big coaching jobs, whether they're African-American or not. I know plenty of female coaches who are way more experienced in water polo than their male counterparts.
 
TED MINNIS, 51, started coaching at Menlo-Atherton High School in California (1990-98). He's currently in his 11^th year of coaching at Harvard where, in 2016, he guided the men's team to the NCAA final four.
 
It's a crazy thing to hear "trailblazer." I don't feel that old.

In the '70s and '80s when I grew up, racial awareness was much different. I swam, and when I was 8 years old, my mom would be in the stands. No one knew she's my mom because she's white—and I'm 6'-5" now, so I was big at 8 years of age. She'd hear, "Oh my God, look at that big black boy on the dock! That's so unfair." I don't blame anybody, but that's how it was.

Now, we deal with more microaggressions*. A tournament doesn't go by that someone does not call me Felix Mercado, the head coach at Brown. He's Puerto Rican and maybe 6-feet tall. I'm wearing Harvard stuff, and they call me the Brown coach. That wouldn't happen to John Tanner; they don't call him Adam Wright. Adam Krikorian isn't called Dejan (Udvocic). It happens to people of color who coach. I don't think people mean it maliciously.

In my water polo life, I've always been seen as different and always felt pressure to do better because of it. But pressure makes diamonds, right? If you don't feel like there's pressure, then you're not really rising to a higher level or holding yourself up to a higher standard.

I always wanted to coach—but I wanted to coach basketball. I just fell into coaching high school water polo in the mid-90s to make some extra money. The turning point was when I started coaching Stanford's age-group club with John Tanner at the urging of Kyle Utsumi [who, incidentally, wrote that 1996 SkipShot article]. JT taught me that there's more to water polo than Xs and Os.

Right now I'm the only black coach in college water polo. I happen to be the only one who got to the Final Four. I've been doing it for 31 years, and I make a living at it. So, I hope I can motivate people or give people hope that if they want to coach— and coach at a high level— they can do it. I only played three years in high school, and my playing career was not illustrious. I didn't play in college or coach a college team before taking the Harvard job in 2010.

So far I've had one black athlete play for me at Harvard, Thomas McNulty [from 2011-2012]. I don't think I have an advantage in recruiting because I'm black. I think I have a recruiting advantage because I work at the best university in the world. I mean, I'm not out there selling the school, that's for sure.

Ultimately, people are going to play for people they connect with. I'm a big personality, have a big smile all the time. It comes back to how I was raised and how we talked about how to act in public. Kids who play for me understand that I'm going to care more about them out of the pool than I do in the pool. So, I think who I am gives me an advantage.

*Microaggression is a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.
 
OMAR AMR, 46, was a 2004 Olympian along with Genai Kerr—the first black men to make a U.S. Olympic water polo team. Amr works as an emergency room and critical care doctor in California.
 
My whole life I wanted to be an Olympian. My father swam for Egypt. My uncle played water polo for Egypt. I learned to swim at the local Y in East L.A. In high school I was tiny—5 feet tall, 91 pounds, the only dark guy in the pool. Every coach would say the same thing: try track or basketball, but not water polo. I had a coach tell me that I wouldn't be as good in the water as a white athlete because Africans' bones are less dense. My junior year, 1990, I hit a growth spurt and suddenly I was best athlete on my high school team. It had the longest winning streak in the country and won the league championship 24 years in a row. But in the '80s and '90s, I would get the N-bomb dropped on me every other day. I thought it was normal.
 
In 1992, I walked on at UC Irvine. At the end of practice, we swam ten 100s, and I beat everybody. My coach told the entire team, "You let this N***** beat all you of you. You guys suck."  Next day, same thing. He didn't know any better. He grew up at a time before [many] black people could vote. He was old school about discipline. He treated me well but, essentially, he used me to make a point to all his white players, over and over, every week. By senior year, I just told him, 'You can't keep saying this.' 
 
After college, it was worse. First trip overseas, every meal was pork. I'm Muslim, I can't eat it. A coach, in front of the whole team, said, "Omar doesn't want to eat with you guys. He wants to be an individual." He wouldn't let me get different meals. For five weeks I ate bread and olive oil. Today, that would make national headlines. But I was the jerk for being different. 
 
Eventually, I made the 2001 World Championship team but I tore my ACL, so I limped off to Harvard Medical School. During rehab, I put on like 20 or 30 pounds of muscle, flew back to California, and Ratko [Rudic] gave me another shot. The Harvard dean let me train for 2004 Olympics, as long as I kept my grades up. So, I'd wake up at 5 a.m., train with Harvard's team, go to class from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., train again with the water polo team from 6 to 8 p.m., the swim team from 8 to 9:30 p.m., lift 'til 11 p.m., study 'til 1 or 2 a.m., sleep, and repeat. Every Friday, Ratko was flying me to California to train. On Sunday, I'd redeye back to Boston and start all over. I slept three hours a day for two years – training my butt off every weekend, six to seven hours every weekday, while going through med school at arguably the hardest med school in the country. 
 
I had to work harder than anybody probably ever had to work in the history of the sport to make one Olympics. If I was white, I would have been a two – if not three – time Olympian. I think if Genai [Kerr] was white, we'd be talking about him as probably the best goalie ever to play the game. Instead Genai's that guy who got to go to one Olympics and didn't play. Today, they're gonna give you a million reasons, and none of them will have to do with race.
 
Every quad, it kills me. In '08, I watched Genai get cut. In 2012, I watched another black player who I thought was the best goalie in the country get cut.
 
From 2013 to '16, I was the US women's team doctor and watched what Ashleigh Johnson went through. I begged her before Rio: If you quit, then everybody who comes after you will quit. If you make this team, win gold, then every person of color is going to believe they can do this. But if everybody gives up, the sport's always going to be white. So I ask players to persevere.
 
I'm retired now. I'm happy. I'm successful.  I accomplished my dream.
 
Goalie GENAI KERR, 44, became the first black American athlete to compete at a men's water polo world championship in 2001—and then became the first (with Omar Amr) black man to make an U.S. Olympic water polo team in 2004.
 
I didn't know what water polo was 'til my sophomore year of high school. My first full season was senior year. I had more college scholarship offers for basketball. The reason I went to UC Irvine for water polo was because of Omar [Amr]—and legendary coach Ted Newland. I made Omar my best friend before he knew it. He made me feel like I not only could belong, but also I could succeed. Oh, I heard the N-word—I can't remember how many times—from my college coaches, teammates, opponents, even other Olympians.

The vast majority of my time at Irvine I didn't pay attention to racial differences. I never had major issues with my teammates. I just wish they could have acknowledged that racism in society affects everything, including experiences in the sport. For example, being pulled over by police for no reason on the way to practice. It has nothing to do with water polo, but teammates drove past because they didn't want to be late for practice. Another time I was driving, I was held at gunpoint while the cop let out two white teammates that I was carpooling with— and then they laughed about it.

As a goalie, what I'd rather be remembered for, outside of blocking the ball, is that because of my size and explosiveness, I'd come out and get a lot of steals. I was an accurate passer who could throw a lot of assists— and a potential shooting threat. I could score full-court, 100 feet away. College courts are smaller now, and they took away the 2-point rule, but I practiced it— probably too frequently. It's like practicing a Hail Mary in football.
           
I retired in 2010. I hope Ashleigh and Max Irving inspire a new generation of black athletes. I've looked out for Ashleigh and Andy Stevens since they were little. Andy was my Mini-Me. He went to Loyola Marymount and should have been the next African-American man to make the Olympic team in 2012 or '16. My goal now is to support the next generation of minority athletes— athletes who may or may not realize they need support.
 
Goalie ASHLEIGH JOHNSON, 26, is the first black woman to make a U.S. Olympic team as well as a 2016 U.S. Olympic Gold medalist, a two-time world champion, and all-time save leader at Princeton (1,362).
 
I grew up in Miami with three brothers and a younger sister [Chelsea, who also played at Princeton]. We all swam and played water polo. Water polo was more fun. I felt really alone as a swimmer, which was a sucky feeling, in the sense that you're not achieving anyone's goals but your own. I've always had my own goals, but I'm extra-motivated by the accountability a team brings.

When we were young, there was the ODP—the Olympic development pipeline—where you'd get seen by coaches. There also was a camp in Miami that three Olympians ran every winter. Genai and Omar were part of that camp. I also spent my youth playing for Carroll Vaughn, a strong female coach who I watched stand up in a male-dominated field. She didn't make me feel like my skin color was going to limit me or hold us back. So I didn't fear being the only black girl trying out for these teams.

A path was possible. I just needed to make the decision to take those opportunities.

When I made the National Team, I really just wanted to fit in. I wasn't from California. I spoke a different water polo language. I was awkward, young, from an east coast school. I chose Princeton because I wanted to pursue high-level academics; I didn't want to be an athlete who just takes classes. A lot of things made me different. And then they were like, "We're gonna focus on your race." I was like, "Damn!" They were applying a larger story to my story. It was hard to understand because they didn't know me.

People were telling me this story, and I wasn't living it. It took me time to understand the context: Black people excluded in aquatics and stereotypes. One thing I didn't see were the people who came before me and didn't make it to where I am. Why is it a big deal that I'm making it now, and who am I clearing a path for?

In recent years, I've struggled to balance it all. I'm trying to speak about all those things while also being in full-time training, trying to mentor. It's like, "What's my role?"
Right now, it's to literally just be here, dying in this pool every day, working SUPER-hard to be the best in this sport. The rest will come later. Right now, I'm an athlete. I am doing everything I can by being here, existing in this space.

This story appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of SkipShot magazine