Chris Gratian — Men's Water Polo

Recently senior driver Chris Gratian of the men's water polo team sat down with 'Prince' senior writer Paul Esposito.

'Prince': How did you get started with water polo?

Chris Gratian: I started playing water polo in the fifth grade. My older brother was playing and I just tended to follow in my brother's footsteps a lot. That's how I got in.

P: How hard is it to teach water polo? Do you have to start at a really young age to be good at it?

CG: It's definitely best to start out young. I mean, I started in fifth grade but I had accomplished so much in competitive swimming so it really got me off on the right foot. But it takes a while, because you have to understand how the game works and you have to develop the swimming ability and endurance. I mean a lot of people are good athletes but are unable to swim, so that's why you need to start young in some ways.

P: How much training is involved in water polo, as compared to swimming?

CG: Well, we start in mid-August doing double practices and we do a long preseason in California, which is perfect because most of us are from there. [During preseason], we do two sessions a day; about four hours in the water and an hour and a half in the weight room. And when we get to school here, we ease off a bit. Including games, we go six days a week and then lifting three times a week and it's a lot. We'll be up at six o'clock almost every day, which is sometimes just not fun.

P: How can one develop such a successful East Coast program in such a decidedly West Coast sport?

CG: We just have a coach from California who knows all the coaches there and he's always watching people play. And then, you just have to sell Princeton as an academic institution, because all the other West Coast schools are offering huge scholarships, which is quite a hurdle.

P: How exciting has it been to be an essential part of a program developing into one of the best on the East Coast in your years here?

CG: That's clearly been very rewarding. My class was a very big class and when we showed up, we started three freshmen and we've just continued to build around my year. Each year, we've gotten better; in my first year, we got seventh at Southerns, didn't make Easterns and I don't think we finished in the Top 25. But by last year, we were undefeated in the southern conference and won the championship, while being No.13 in the nation.

P: How intense can a water polo game get? How much stuff goes on behind the ball and away from the official's eyes?

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CG: It usually just depends upon the team that you are playing. We have a pretty clean team and we pride ourselves on that but we play teams, like St. Francis [NY] and Queens, which are very, very dirty. I mean, during the game, you want to protect the ball and keep your body between the ball and your opponent, which leaves open for kidney shots or knees to the back. People get hit in the face a lot. In sophomore year, I had a compound fracture in my face; I just got nailed in the face from a follow-through.

P: Is that the most serious injury you ever had from water polo?

CG: For me, yeah, but I have seen much worse. My nose was in 16 pieces after that; it was really brutal and covered most of my eye.

There was one instance here, UMass was playing Queens in one of our tournaments. One of UMass' freshman players had scored a couple of goals and of course, was sort of taunting Queens. Then, one of the UMass players got beaten down so badly, had almost 30 stitches in his face and even had it on tape. They sent it to the NCAA for review and it wound up that no one got suspended, which was amazing. But [in the ensuing fight], two guys had over 20 stitches and had to go to the hospital. People were throwing chairs; it was pretty brutal. They had to call in the Princeton Borough Police to come and calm the scene. So it's a brutal sport and tends to allow a lot of unsportsmanship, which is a shame because it's such a great sport otherwise.

P: Is it hard being a dual-sport athlete at Princeton?

CG: Well, since I've been here I haven't really had an off-season. I start in the middle of the summer with water polo and I enter swimming at mid-season. After that, I go back to spring training for water polo and then once summer hits again, I build up a lot of endurance to be ready for the new season in the fall.

P: Since I am an ex-swimmer, I know what it means to be 'burned out.' How do you not get burned out between both sports?

CG: Well, I don't think I'll ever get burned out from water polo; it's great. Swimming is a little different, though — you are watching the lanes go back and forth, back and forth. But water polo acts as a break from that so it makes a difference for me at least. And the swim coach [Rob Orr], he's really good at putting me on a training schedule that is doable, a lighter schedule than the rest of the team, more geared towards sprints. I get a lot of my base from the water polo season and then I get to fine tune it during swimming, tapering to prepare for H-Y-Ps.

P: Have you ever even considered quitting one or both teams, in order to do other activities on campus?

CG: Not even for a second. I came for both teams, as well as the academics and I've been pleased the entire time, so that was never even an issue. If I miss a workout, I don't feel good. I need to be working out all the time. I've been competing for almost 18 years. If I'm without it, it feels like something is missing. I just don't feel whole.