by Richard ("Doc") Hunkler, Ph.D.
Courtesy of WaterPoloPlanet.com

Similar to playing Chess, when playing water polo for almost every move your opponent makes there is a counter move, and for every counter move there is a counter of the counter move ad infinitum. Actually there are not an infinite number of counter moves, but the number of counter moves is so great that to humans it might as well be infinite. Sometimes it appears that this sport was created solely for the purpose of enhancing one’s gray matter or if not then its purpose is to keep those involved in the sport young. You know what they say about brain cells, “If you don’t use them then you lose them!”

Anyone who has played, coached, or refereed a nanosecond of water polo knows that dummies hardly ever finish first. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but if I were a betting person I would bet on “smarts” every time. If you do that then the chances are your win column will be much larger than your loss column, but heck, winning, unlike what Coach Lombardi said, is not the only thing. It is just a side effect of the time spent in water pol o on solving and proposing problems, and it turns out that many of the water polo solutions apply to life in general as well. Companies today need and seek problem solvers or should I say, hopefully, they need ethical and/or moral problem solvers, and many times they need problem solvers who can think fast on their feet or even on their egg-beating feet. 

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