{"id":3317,"date":"2017-04-10T13:26:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T13:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/?p=3317"},"modified":"2017-04-12T18:56:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T18:56:42","slug":"water-polo-brings-out-abbie-coscias-inner-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/2017\/04\/10\/water-polo-brings-out-abbie-coscias-inner-warrior\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Polo Brings Out Abbie Coscia\u2019s Inner Warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Abbie Coscia ’19<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Matthew Liebowitz<\/em><\/p>\n

The first time Abbie Coscia\u2019s mom saw her daughter play water polo, she was horrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe screamed, \u2018That girl\u2019s drowning my daughter,\u2019\u201d recalled Abbie.<\/p>\n

Her grandfather, who Abbie cited as one of her \u201cbiggest supporters,\u201d saw things differently, even from the first time she jumped in the pool as a seventh grader.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe not right away. Water polo is, notoriously, a brutally hands-on sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a little seventh grader, he might have been worried,\u201d Abbie said. It didn\u2019t take long for her grandfather, who also played, and now regularly sends her tips and texts after games, to realize Abbie\u2019s prowess in the pool would outdo any fears he had for her safety.<\/p>\n

Now that he\u2019s seen her play for three years, \u201che\u2019s more assured I can hold my own out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he was right: Abbie, a sophomore from Holyoke, Mass., is now the team\u2019s co-captain. She also holds the record for the most goals scored in a single season \u2013 68, in 2016 \u2013 and is on track to break the record for all times goals, 136, currently held by Maddy Stern \u201914, now a student at Harvard University.<\/p>\n

Abbie\u2019s road from newbie to hard-charging co-captain began the first day she went out for a sport during her seventh-grade spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked in, there were 12 people, and eight of us didn\u2019t know how to play at all,\u201d recalled Abbie. \u201cCoach [Bill] Berghoff said, \u2018It\u2019s fine, none of you know the sport, or the rules, or have ever watched a game in your life, [but] it\u2019s going to be fine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbie made it clear she was entirely inexperienced at the time. \u201cI had seen a water polo ball once, but literally had no clue what anything was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Coach Berghoff came to the team with decades of experience; he played high school water polo in Worthington, Ohio, played on Bowdoin\u2019s club team in college, began refereeing NCAA games in 1986, and went on to coach the sport at Wilbraham and Monson Academy, Suffield Academy, and Choate Rosemary Hall before coming to Williston.<\/p>\n

Berghoff quickly taught Abbie and her teammates the basics, and from there, she was able to use the hand-eye coordination she\u2019d developed on the basketball court, along with her swimming skills, to not just participate in the new sport, but to excel. She was named Most Valuable Player her freshman year, just two years into the sport.<\/p>\n

Abbie\u2019s water polo career may have gotten off to its official start that first seventh grade spring, but in reality it is somewhat of a lifetime in the making, to the obvious chagrin of her parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always getting into wrestling fights with my brother,\u201d Abbie said about growing up with her younger brother Jack, who will most likely attend Williston as a 7th<\/sup> grader in the fall. \u201cMy mom would get furious with us. She\u2019d yell as us three times a day to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The roughhousing paid off; when opponents can, as Abbie described it, \u201cbasically push you under water and drown you if you have the ball,\u201d her tenacity and persistence have made her the star player she is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a rough sport,\u201d said Abbie. \u201cTo win water polo, you just have to be aggressive.\u201d It\u2019s that raw power and tenacity, she stressed, that counts, especially when, on offense, it\u2019s likely she\u2019ll have two or three opponents hanging on her, trying to bring her down and get the ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can be talented,\u201d she said, \u201cbut if you just sit there, you\u2019re never going to get the ball. I love getting girls to be passionate about the game, seeing girls become really aggressive and work so hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Berghoff put it: \u201cIf she goes to a college that doesn\u2019t have water polo, I imagine she\u2019ll play rugby.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding her work ethic, and her desire to always improve, Abbie cited the Advantage Rule. According to the NCAA Rules for the Collegiate Water Polo Association, the Advantage Rule states, \u201cThe referees shall have discretion to award (or not award) any ordinary, exclusion or penalty foul, depending on whether the decision would advantage the attacking team. They shall officiate in favor of the attacking team by awarding a foul or refraining from awarding a foul if, in their opinion, awarding the foul would be an advantage to the offending player\u2019s team. The referees shall apply this principle to the fullest extent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as Abbie put it, \u201cIf you\u2019re a better player, you\u2019re going to have to fight harder for them to call a foul.\u201d She said she thrives on this rule.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It] makes me push myself harder,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to get me better in the long run; it makes me work for it. If I\u2019m playing against someone that\u2019s weaker and they foul me, it\u2019s not making me work to my full potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coach Berghoff said along with Abbie\u2019s ferocity, she has the right mentality for the game. \u201cAs the offensive focal point, she\u2019s got the perfect psyche for what she\u2019s got to do,\u201d Berghoff said. \u201cIf you\u2019re a player that gets upset by those kinds of things you\u2019re totally knocked out of the game mentally. She just keeps on rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another, perhaps less obvious aspect of the sport Abbie loves, is the feeling she has once the final whistle blows and she\u2019s out of the pool.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a game I\u2019m happy as can be, I\u2019m completely calm,\u201d she said. \u201cI always wanted to do football and wrestling, this is my way of getting my energy and anger out.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cI\u2019m in a much better mood when I wake up I know that I have water polo.\u201d She can track that mood change back several months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the winter, when it\u2019s bad weather, I\u2019m kind of mellow, but I\u2019m very consistently positive in the spring,\u201d Abbie said. \u201cWhen it\u2019s the middle of January, I know I only have two months left [before the season].\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite her personal records, Abbie is at heart a team player. Because the sport is so physical, and also because her fellow players had to fight so hard to even field a team the past few years \u2013 Berghoff, along with Olivia Cuevas and Maddy Stern before that \u2014 gave presentations to the middle school in the hopes of recruiting students to join the team \u2014 they\u2019ve developed an incredibly strong bond.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re coming together nicely, and early,\u201d said Berghoff. The team lost its first game 8-6 against Choate on Wednesday April 5. Berghoff called against the top-ranked team \u201ca great moral victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The close score, Berghoff said, had a lot to do with the budding chemistry of the new squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just Abbie, this is a team that can become really good if everybody blends together,\u201d Berghoff said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got Abbie who people know you have to pay attention to, and a couple sneaky girls who they don\u2019t know they have to pay attention to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berghoff compared Abbie\u2019s current leadership skills to Maddy Stern\u2019s. \u201cShe\u2019s a great teammate. She a lot like Maddy. She\u2019s the mother hen of these girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although she\u2019s well on the way to breaking Maddy\u2019s record and becoming the all-time goal scorer for the school, Abbie is quick to give praise where it\u2019s due.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love coach Berghoff to death, he\u2019s one of my favorite people at Williston,\u201d she said. \u201cI give him credit for it all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Liebowitz The first time Abbie Coscia\u2019s mom saw her daughter play water polo, she was horrified. \u201cShe screamed, \u2018That girl\u2019s drowning my daughter,\u2019\u201d recalled Abbie. Her grandfather, who Abbie cited as one of her \u201cbiggest supporters,\u201d saw things differently, even from the first time she jumped in the pool as a seventh grader. … Continue reading Water Polo Brings Out Abbie Coscia\u2019s Inner Warrior<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athletics-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3317"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3334,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3317\/revisions\/3334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}