From the Mountain View High School Cougars boys to the Summit High School Storm girls, a sport built on endurance, strategy and teamwork is finding a natural home with a new generation of Central Oregon athletes.
Watch a high school water polo match for the first time and it takes a few minutes to understand everything happening in front of you.
Whistles echo across the pool as players surge through the water, battle for position and disappear behind bursts of spray. The bright yellow ball moves quickly overhead until, almost without warning, someone rises remarkably high out of the water, catches it with one hand and fires toward the goal. Before the crowd has finished reacting, everyone is racing in the opposite direction.
What first appears to be organized chaos soon reveals its structure. Defenses shift. Passing lanes open. Players anticipate where teammates will be before the ball arrives. There is constant communication above the surface and relentless movement below it.
And there’s one detail that makes all of this considerably more impressive: the pool can be nearly seven feet deep, so nobody gets to stand up. For much of the game, there is no bottom to push off from and nowhere to put your feet down for a break.
Water polo combines the stamina of competitive swimming with passing, physical positioning and tactical thinking, all while removing solid ground from the equation. Speed and strength matter, but so do coordination, awareness and the ability to make decisions while exhausted.
Nearly 40,000 boys and girls participated in high school water polo nationally during the 2024–25 school year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. And while the sport can still feel relatively undiscovered, it has a long history: men’s water polo entered the Olympics in 1900, with women’s competition added in 2000.
Here in Central Oregon, that history has developed a chapter of its own.
For more than two decades, local athletes, coaches and families have been quietly building a competitive water polo culture. Mountain View’s boys have captured three state championships, while across town the Summit girls won the Oregon 5A state championship in 2025.
The relationships formed along the way can become as important as the competition itself. Nicolette Rice, mother of Jack and a Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s International Realty advisor, says that was one of the things that surprised her most.
“The team quickly becomes family,” she says. “They really do have each other’s back and work together as a group. The support by the parents and families is also huge.”
That same connection is evident across town on the Summit High School “Storm” girls team.
For Storm player Cambria Ruiz, #17, the intensity of a close game has a way of overriding the exhaustion.
Cambria’s mother, Stephanie Ruiz, also a Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s International Realty advisor, has watched water polo bring out qualities in her daughter that extend well beyond the pool:
“Confidence. Leadership. Camaraderie.”
More Than a Game in the Pool
The community surrounding water polo is particularly important in Oregon, where the sport operates as a varsity club rather than an OSAA-sanctioned sport. Coaches, parents, volunteers, donors and sponsors help make pool time, officials, equipment and travel possible.
Tara Farstvedt, a Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s International Realty advisor and Madden’s mother, says watching her son play gave her a deeper appreciation for everything that happens beyond the scoreboard.
“What I didn’t fully appreciate until I watched Madden and his teammates play was the level of trust, communication and teamwork involved,” she says. “People see the games, but they don’t always see the hard work, commitment and support these teammates give each other every day.”
Perhaps that helps explain why the sport feels so at home in Central Oregon. Young people here grow up skiing, biking, hiking, climbing, running and swimming. Water polo fits naturally into that world: demanding, adventurous, highly competitive and still a little outside the sporting mainstream.
This fall, Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s International Realty is proud to sponsor Central Oregon Water Polo, including the Mountain View and Summit high school teams. For a company whose advisors live, work and raise their families in the communities they serve, the connection is personal. Tara, Nicolette and Stephanie aren’t simply advisors supporting a local youth program. They’re water polo moms standing poolside, watching their own kids compete.
Maybe the best way to understand the appeal of water polo is simply to watch a game. Follow the ball at first, but then look beyond it: the player creating space, the defender shifting before the pass arrives, the goalkeeper reading the developing play and all the work happening beneath the surface.
What initially looked like chaos begins to make sense. You see the speed, the physicality and the strategy, but also the trust between teammates and the community that has grown around them.
And once you see the whole game, it’s pretty hard to look away.
