Being from Laguna Beach and having a father as well as two older brothers who played collegiate water polo, it’s no surprise that senior attacker Nolan McConnell has made his second home in the pool.
“I want to say I was like six or seven [when I started playing],” McConnell said. “They just kind of tossed me in there when I was a young boy and told me to figure it out. It was inevitable, it’s kind of in my blood.”
Thanks to McConnell’s older brother Nathan, who played for the 49ers in 2013, McConnell has had his sights set on LBSU since high school.
“I pretty much knew I was coming to Long Beach,” he said. “[Nathan] played here when I was a junior [and] senior in high school. So, I was able to come up to Long Beach [and] meet all of his teammates, hang out with them, talk with [the coach] Gavin — so my recruiting process was fairly easy.”
Although McConnell said he looked at powerhouse PAC-12 schools like UCLA, USC and UC Berkeley, coming to LBSU just felt natural.
However, since joining the water polo program, McConnell has faced his fair share of challenges both in the pool and out.
Last year, McConnell tore his ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow, which resulted in his absence from the water polo pool. He said the recovery and rehab process was one of the more difficult times of his life.
“I was out for 11 months, just sitting on my butt doing nothing. It was tough – I was very limited as to what I could do… for the first three, four months until I could start doing shoulder rehab,” he said. “Around seven or eight months [into recovery] I was allowed to get in the pool and start doing some leg work. Mentally, it was definitely one of the toughest things I’ve been through, not being able to play the sport I love, it was really tough.”
Now that he’s back in the pool, McConnell is all goals.
So far, he has scored on 93 percent of his shots and leads the team in goals with 28.
This season, the 49ers left the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference, which included schools such as UCLA and Stanford, and are now part of the new Golden Coast conference. Joining teams such as San Jose State, UC Santa Barbara and Pepperdine, McConnell said that he’s taking this season one day at a time.
As for life after LBSU, McConnell said he’s not sure what he’ll being doing after graduation — but he hopes to combine water polo with his child development major.