Maddox McClellan shares how he gained confidence to improve at playing water polo.
For months, I did everything perfectly. And it was killing my game. My job on the water polo team was to pass the ball and watch others score. Coach called me a facilitator, and my teammates echoed it. So, I passed the ball, every single time. Coach said to swing the ball to our best player, and like clockwork, I did.
The worst part wasn’t that I had stopped scoring, it was that I lost my aggression. Everything drained my confidence, but I still knew I had a powerful shot. I felt it in those moments nobody saw – those times after practice, the ones that didn’t count. The problem was that every time I passed the ball, I was passing away the version of myself that could do more. One day, a D1 water polo player who had come back to coach our club for a few months, brought me to the side and looked me straight in my eyes. “Dude, shoot the ball, you have a cannon.”
So, I did. The ball swung back around, I gripped the rubber, and fired the shot I’d been avoiding for months. It flew directly into my defender’s hand. When the buzzer sounded, I braced myself for the disappointment, or even worse, laughter. Instead, the player clapped, and it shocked me. “Good shot, I love it”.
I almost thought that he was talking to someone else, but his eyes were locked directly with mine. That’s when it hit me: it wasn’t about if I made the shot or not, it was whether I was willing to take it or not. At that moment, I made a rule for myself. One real shot every game.