Revived water polo league aims to grow talent pool on Maui

KIHEI — It’s casually called the Wednesday Night League, but it has changed things immensely in the sports life of Mia Matsumoto.

Matsumoto is an incoming junior at Kamehameha Schools Maui who competes for the Warriors’ swimming and girls water polo teams. 

Matsumoto has been a competitive swimmer for several years, but she took up the sport of water polo as a high school sophomore after her mother Hannah Matsumoto urged her to try it.

“I like it way more than swimming,” Mia Matsumoto said prior to her semifinal game in the Wednesday Night League water polo tournament on July 3 at the Kihei Aquatic Center. 

“This is for more like fun, but also getting better because when it’s high school you have a reason to be competing. Unlike this, you’re just playing against friends because you don’t know who is on your team, so you’re playing against your high school teammates. 

“So, it’s more like for fun, but you’re still learning a lot.”

That is the basic premise of the Wednesday Night League that is the brainchild of Shawn Donohue, who was the Baldwin High School girls water polo coach for six years (2016-22). Donohue, through his Baldwin tenure and as program director for Island Aquatics swim club, has helped more than a dozen girls develop into college water polo players from the Maui Interscholastic League.

“Everyone registers with USA Water Polo under Island Water Polo, but we just call it the Wednesday Night League,” Donohue said of the league that is free for participants. “While I was officiating water polo this season for the MIL I saw the joy and exuberance that they were playing with and also the need for a little bit extra since we don’t have that really here, like we have club swimming.

“We don’t have club water polo, so I just kind of saw the need for these athletes to continue and to introduce new athletes to the sport so that we’re not so far behind as we move into the high school seasons. And they (then) have some kind of basis and foundation to learn the sport and continue growing in it and enjoying it.”

The MIL has produced several college players in the sport that was officially adopted by the Hawai‘i High School Athletic Association in 2004, but unlike almost every other sport on the MIL calendar, girls water polo has had no youth or club system to feed the high school ranks.

In 2019, Donohue coordinated a smaller version of the system he is running now, but the pandemic halted that effort the next year and nothing had been done again to develop water polo outside of the high school ranks on Maui until this spring.

The MIL has never advanced a team to an HHSAA state final in the sport and while one of the goals of the Wednesday Night League is to help the Maui high schools improve in the sport, there are other benefits and plans in the works.

“I think it will eventually, we might not see it immediately, but my hope is that we can grow this feeder program to maybe a couple other pools, maybe one in town and one Upcountry, so that we can start more of the youth group like we’re doing with our new water-ball program where the 10-and-unders (play),” Donohue said. “Water ball is an introduction to water polo. They really enjoy it, smiling faces everywhere.”

Mikela De Aguiar is a 2023 Baldwin graduate who was the MIL Player of the Year. She attended the University of Hawai‘i Maui College for her freshman year and is set to play water polo at Ventura College in California in the fall.

This summer De Aguiar has been a coach for the young group of water-ball players in the shallow pool at the Kihei Aquatic Center as Donohue runs practice for the older players in the adjacent deep pool.

“Just seeing how (Donohue’s) put so much work and effort into this program is just amazing, a great thing to be a part of, especially as a coach,” De Aguiar said. “It’s like a full-circle moment for me because I was the age of some of the young players. It’s super cool.”

De Aguiar smiles widely when asked about her young troopers.

“I absolutely love it and it gives me so much more appreciation for Shawn and my previous coaches for the patience that it takes,” De Aguiar said. “Just teaching the young kids, it’s what I love so much, it’s so rewarding.”

Ryan Walsh just finished his 10th season as head coach of Seabury Hall water polo. His 8-year-old daughter Naomi Walsh is among the water-ball players coached by De Aguiar.

“Seeing Mikela and some of these other girls that are helping out — surgically dissected us during the water polo season — having them do this, it just sort of pulls you back and helps you realize that this is a community instead of just individual players,” Ryan Walsh said as he watched Naomi practice. “Everybody is kind of pulling for each other, making sure that the sport prevails. It’s cool to see, starting here with these little kids.”

Donohue said that the program could expand to the fall as well.

“After they get back to school and get started we’d like to do a little fall ball in September and October before their MIL swim season starts,” Donohue said. “Keep it going for them so they’re even more ready in the spring.”

BUILDING THE PIPELINE

Current Baldwin head coach Lauren Shinozuka has led the Bears to back-to-back MIL titles in her first two years at the helm. She relieved her assistant coach Arielle Obrero on the officials table at halftime of the championship match Wednesday night, sitting next to veteran MIL administrator Dave Wintermeyer while keeping the official scoresheet.

“I think that’s always been one of the challenges of Maui water polo is that we don’t have club opportunities, so I’m really grateful for Shawn and Island Aquatics for hosting this and making it easily available for so many of our girls to try it,” Shinozuka said. “In MIL water polo, because there’s no club, we do a lot of teaching from a pretty basic level, but the good part of it is we encourage a lot of other athletes to come out from different sports. So, girls are willing to just give it a chance because they don’t have any preconceived notions and they are willing to come out and learn. 

“But seeing all these athletes at a young level really getting great experience — we were here the second week — and we’re really seeing huge gains. So it makes me really excited, it’s great to see them building all these skills, playing together and getting to play with each other, which we don’t really have the chance to do in the MIL.”

The league is run by volunteers all the way through, many of them from the MIL ranks of coaches, officials and administrators.

“We have a lot coming back to give back,” Donohue said of the numerous former players on the pool deck at games and practices. “And they are also giving back to give back to their community and paying back what they garnered so much from in their years … Now they’re here coaching the little ones.”

The program holds practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays and games on Wednesdays. It started on May 28 and ended Wednesday night with the Humus beating the Triggers 14-6 in the championship game behind four goals from Matsumoto. The ‘Cudas beat the Eels 14-8 for third place.

The four-team league includes more than 50 players, boys and girls, ages 11-18. Donohue just put a sign-up sheet at the Kihei Aquatic Center during the MIL tournament in April before starting the program that runs after swim practices end.

“The amount of signups was shocking, but it was great because we were able to have four full teams with substitutes,” Donohue said. “It’s very interdependent, interactive — we have high level, mid level, and all levels on one team so that the older, more experienced athletes like the seniors from the MIL teams can help out with the middle-schoolers and elementary, grammar-schoolers that are participating in the program. 

“That way everybody is sharing and growing together in the community.”

Donohue’s daughter Jacsen Donohue, a Baldwin graduate, played four years of college water polo at California Lutheran University and his son Maverick Donohue swam for four years at Concordia University Irvine. 

The players in the Wednesday Night League coach themselves during games. 

“I think the goal is to ultimately create more opportunities for student-athletes, so that they have the choices and opportunities to do what they want with their lives beyond Maui and the island and swimming and water polo,” Shawn Donohue said. “I really just love seeing that the athletes involved made it their own thing. They’ve taken ownership of it. … It’s really their thing. I just kind of put it out there and they really took ownership of it. They even hang out after the games, it’s a social happening. I love it.”

Matsumoto was considering competing in MIL surfing during the spring season when girls water polo takes place.

“I’m getting a lot better,” Matsumoto said. “My mom kind of put water polo on my mind — I didn’t really want to do it at first because I was thinking surfing. … Sophomore year I just took it and I like it a lot.”

Hannah Matsumoto’s talk-story session to convince Mia to take up the sport worked.

“She kind of convinced me … I’m super glad she did, I think it’s really fun and I got to experience more stuff and I get to meet new friends,” Matsumoto said. “It was super hard to tell my mom she was right.”

Kailie Kalepa, who graduated from Kamehameha Maui in May, played the sport in high school for three seasons — her freshman season in the MIL was wiped out by the pandemic. She plans to play on the club team at UH-Manoa when she gets there in the fall.

“I think that this is a really great program and I’m really lucky that coach Shawn actually put this out there as an option for us this summer,” Kalepa said. “It’s exciting to see that kids all ages are starting to play water polo, and especially boys because we don’t have any boys squads here. But to introduce the sport to them and they tell their friends, ‘Hey, like, this is so fun.’ Maybe that will create a chain reaction in order to get more kids to play.”

One of the boys in the ranks is 12-year-old Callum McLaughlin, an incoming seventh-grader at Kihei Charter School. He enthusiastically jumps into the goal each night for the Eels right after swim practice.

“It’s really fun, I’ve learned a lot more and it’s cool to meet new people and play with my friends,” McLaughlin said. “It’s really cool, it’s a brand-new experience. I’ve been to water polo matches before and I’m like, ‘I wonder when I get to do that?’ Now, I get to play with a real team in a real league, it’s really fun.”